HOME   LIFE 

IN 

IRELAND 


BY 

ROBERT    LYND 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  FROM  PHOTOGRAPHS 


CHICAGO 
A.  C.  McCLURG  &  CO. 

191  2 


-V  r, 


'^  ^>  o  '  ^  /!.  '> 

f.v  w'  t>  .>-  i  1^ 

Co/>yriirIil  in  the  British  Empire  of  Mills  &  Boon,  Ltd.,  London 


O'NEILL  LIBRARY 
AUG  BOSTON  COLLEGE 


SYLVIA    LYND 


PREFACE  TO  FIllST  EDITION 

T  WISH  to  thank  Mrs  N.  F.  Diyhurst  and  i\lr 
J.  \V.  Good  for  tlie  help  they  gave  nie  at  various 
points  while  1  was  writing  this  book — help  all 
tlie  more  generous  because  neither  of  them  is 
likely  to  agree  with  all  I  sa,y.  I*;i(lraif  <)  (Joiii- 
eeaniiain  will  p('i'lia,[)S  i"(HM)griise  somclliiiig  bke 
the  echo  of  his  voiee  in  one  of  the  elia[)ters.  J\li' 
and  Mrs  Robert  Steen  may  not  see  tlie  image  of 
their  kindness  reflected  in  these  pages,  but  it  is 
none  the  less  there,  for  it  was  in  their  house  and 
in  the  house  at  Killure  that  T  received  the  most 
abundant  hosjiitality  I  have  known,  and  was 
initiated  into  the  friendship  of  country  people 
and  places. 

R.  L. 

Scptemher  1909. 


PREFACE  TO  THIRD  EDITION 

I  snri'osK  iio  one — no  one,  at  niiy  rato,  with 
eiithusiasiii  in  his  body — ever  writes  a  book  iu 
these  days  witliout  wishing  immediately  after- 
wards to  overflow  into  a  preface  exjjlaining  what 
the  book  nicnns.  I  overflowed  into  a  preface — a 
real  pre(";i,t(»iial  |H('f;icc-  to  tli(;  first  edition  of  tliis 
liook,  I)u(,  it  see?ned  unixM-essary,  so  I  destroyed  or 
lost  it.  W  there  is  a  preface  to  this  new  edition, 
it  is  not  1,  l)ut  my  publishers,  who  must  be  blamed 
for  it. 

At  the  same  time,  I  am  glad  they  demanded  the 
preface,  for  it  enables  me  to  say  a  second  time 
some  of  tlic  things  1  have  said  already,  and  so 
help  to  estal)lisli  their  truth  in  average  minds. 
I  am  especially  glad  of  an  opportunity  to  repeat 
my  belief  in  the  oneness  of  the  Irish  people,  north 
and  south,  east  and  west — a  belief,  I  may  say, 
which  has  been  challenged  by  several  critics  with 
denials  rather  than  with  arguments.  In  spite  of 
these  denials,  however,  it  is  becoming  more  gene- 
rally recognised  every  day  that  the  northern  and 
southern,  the  .Protestant  and  Catholic,  Irish  are 
potentially  one  people  as  surely  as  are  the  northern 
and  southern,  the  Protestant  and  Catholic,  English. 
If  Ireland  has  divisions  of  1)lood  and  interests,  so 
h.'is  ICiigland,  Indeed,  so  different  Jire  the  ])eople  of 
one  English  county  from  tlie  people  of  another,  that 
one  of  their  writers,  Dr  J^aty,  recently  contended, 
in  a  book  on  "  International  Law,"  that  Enoiish 
patriotism  could  not  long  survive  the  era  of  fast 


viii        HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

and  cheap  railway  trains,  Ijringing,  as  these  must 
do,  the  Northiimljrian  and  the  Devonian  and  the 
man  of  Suttblk  into  each  other's  countrysides  and 
letting  them  see  how  utterly  at  variance  with 
each  other  in  manners,  speech,  and  outlook  they 
are.  The  Northumbrian,  the  Devonian,  and,  if 
I  may  coin  a  word,  the  Suliolkian — so  runs  the 
arjzument — have  hitherto  been  i)atri(>tic  l<]ni>lish- 
men  because  eacii  of  them  bebeved  that  all  l*]nglaiid 
was  merely  an  enlargement  of  his  own  county,  and 
that  all  English  men  and  women  were  made  after 
the  pattern  of  the  men  and  women  of  his  own 
parish.  Let  him  once  grasp  the  fact  that  beyond 
a  certain  radius  he  is  tlu'ce-parts  a  foreigner  in 
his  own  country,  and  English  patriotism  will 
come  tuml)linf  like  a  house  of  cards  and  leave 
room  for  a  new  sort  of  patriotism  to  l)e  built  up 
on  the  basis  of  the  parisli  or  commune.  It  is 
worth  noting,  by  the  way,  that  Colxlen  fore- 
shadowed a  possible  reversion  throughout  Europe 
to  the  municipal  system  in  politics,  with,  as 
a  necessary  consequence,  the  municipal  kind  of 
patriotism.  Of  course,  the.  arguments  which  Dr 
Baty,  quoting  Cobden,  puts  forward  apply,  not 
only  to  England,  but  to  every  country  in  J^^urope, 
and  point  to  the  disruption  in  the  comparatively 
near  future  of  every  nation  and  empire  the  world 
over,  except  nations  and  em])iros  on  a  strictly 
federal  basis.  Much  as  I  l)eiieve  in  communal 
and  municipal  patriotism,  and  much  as  I  dis- 
believe in  nations  and  empires  which  contain 
reluctant  parishes  and  rekictant  countries,  1  need 
hardly  say  that  I  think  Dr  Baty  presses  his  theory 
too  far. 

Jf  I  quote   him,  then,  it  is  not  l)ecause  I  agree 
with  him  altogether,  but  in  order  to  stress  the  fact 


PREFACE  ix 

that  it  is  ns  easy  to  deny  tlie  oneuess  of  the  people 
of  England  as  it  is  to  deny  the  oneness  of  the 
people  of  Ireland.  In  Ireland,  unfortunately,  we 
have  allowed  our  language  —  always  the  most 
vigorous  symbol  of  national  unity — to  (let  us 
say)  ebb.  We  are  also  without  free  political 
institutions.  These  things,  however,  do  not  dis- 
prove our  oneness  :  they  only  show  that  we  have 
not  yet  entirely  realised  it. 

One  of  the  most  absurd  arguments  hurled 
against  tlie  unity  of  the  Irish  people  is  that  our 
origins  are  different,  as  though  any  healthy  people 
in  Europe  could  survive  a  parallel  test.  One  even 
hears  honest  and  pleasant  people  making  state- 
ments such  as  that  our  language  is  the  traditional 
language  of  only  a  section  of  the  people.  Just  as 
Broadbent,  in  "John  Bull's  Other  Island,"  speaks 
of  the  r»ilile  as  an  ossentinlly  Protestant  document, 
so  a  number  of  people  talk  of  Oaelic  as  though  it 
were  a  pcuruliarly  (JatlioHc  jtossession.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  Irish  is  a  national  possession  which  the 
Protestant  and  Presbyterian  inhabitants  of  the 
country  inherit  through  their  ancestors  as  surely 
as  they  inherit  their  share  of  Irish  air  and  soil. 
Irish  is  a  ])art  of  the  traditional  atmosphere  of 
Ireland.  In  su[)port  of  this  view,  Dr  Douglas 
Hyde,  Professor  of  Irish  in  the  National  University, 
referred  some  time  ago  to  the  language  "  as 
it  was  spoken  one  hundred  years  ago,  right  u]) 
to  the  gates  of  Dublin  ;  and,  in  fact,  by  all 
Ireland,  even  the  descendants  of  the  Elizabethans 
and  Cromwellians,  including  even  the  Lowland 
Scotchmen  in  North  -  East  Ulster,  who,  I  may 
mention  in  ))assing,  were  habitual  Gaelic  speakers, 
though  the  l)ulk  of  them  came  from  Galloway  and 
Ayrshire.     Indeed,"  he  added,   "  almost   the  only 


X  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

iion-Irisli  speaking  population  in  Ireland  were  the 
cliiklren  of  a  small  hody  of  planters  who  came 
from  England  and  settled  in  South  Ulster,  in  parts 
of  Armagh,  'JYrone,  and,  perhaps,  in  spots  of  Fer- 
managh." An  exaggeration,  perhaps,  but  we  know 
that  in  one  Presbyterian  church,  within  a  short  dis- 
tance of  Belfast,  sermons  in  Irish  used  fre{[uently 
to  be  delivered  towards  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  It  is  unlikely  that  this  was  a  mere 
eccentric  accident.  Just  as  there  are  many  hisli- 
speaking  Catliolic  congregations  to-day  which 
never  hear  a  sermon  in  Irish,  so  there  must  have 
been  many  Irish -speaking  Presbyterian  congrega- 
tions a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  or  so  which 
never  heard  a  sermon  in  Ii'ish.  \t  must  be 
remembered  that  in  those  days  Jiot  only  was 
Irish  looked  u])on  as  a  symbol  of  inferiority  and 
semi-savagery,  but  it  had  becji  for  a  long  time  under 
the  ban  of  the  law. 

Had  the  Protestant  Church  of  Ireland  lived  in 
the  spirit  of  the  great  P)is]io|)  Iledcll,  who  had 
the  Bible  translated  into  Irish  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  liad  the  Pre8l)yt(;rians  reiilised  tlie 
truth  of  the  Ilev.  Norman  Alacleod  of  (Jampsie's 
remarks  about  Irish  two  hundred  years  later, 
non-Catholic  Ireland  might  have  been  Irish- 
speaking  to-day.  "  I  am  more  convinced  than 
ever,"  wrote  Dr  Macleod  in  The  OrtJtodox  Pretihy- 
tcruiH.  for  November  IBM,'],  "that-  the  iiish 
language  is  the  key,  the  very  key  to  the  Irish 
heart."  Of  course,  this  was  with  reference  to 
the  prospects  of  winning  Ireland  to  Protestantism. 
The  words  are  true,  however,  apart  altogether 
from  their  application  to  the  business  of  prose- 
lytism.  The  heart  of  Irekind,  whether  in  the 
history  of  the  past  or  in  high  visions  of  the  future, 


PREFACE  xi 

can  only  lie  reached  by  those  who  have  taken  the 
Irish  language  as  the  key.  Like  a  key,  it  is 
chiefly  valuable,  not  for  its  mere  shape  or  com- 
position, but  for  tliat  to  which  it  admits  us  and 
for  that  which  it  enables  us  to  shut  out. 

To  return,  however  :  there  are  a  hundred  other 
tilings  which  show  how  Ireland  has  adopted 
equally  into  her  own  household  all  the  peoples 
who  ever  came  to  her  shores,  Gael  and  Saxon, 
Pict  and  Norman  and  Dane,  ami  offered  them 
places  at  her  table  as  her  authentic  family.  For 
one  thinl^^  she  lias  chosen  her  heroes  impartially 
from  them  all.  (Juchullain,  Brian,  Owen  Roe 
O'Neill,  Dean  Swift,  Lord  Edward  Fitzgerald, 
Tone,  William  Orr,  M'Cracken,  Davis  —  two 
thousand  years  of  heroic  names  testify  to  the 
continuous  assimilating  power  of  Ireland  and  fore- 
tell the  ultimate  unity  of  her  people. 

Even  the  English  language  as  it  is  spoken  in 
Ireland  shows  far  fewer  divergencies  of  use  in 
north  and  south  than  is  generally  appreciated. 
Let  an  Ulstcrman  take  up  Patrick  Kennedy's 
delightful  book,  "  The  Fireside  Stories  of  Ireland," 
writ'ten  in  the  dialect  of  the  Wexford  peasantry, 
and  he  will  feel  curiously  at  home  with  many  of 
the  idioms  he  finds  there.  He  will  find  that  iu 
Wexford,  as  in  Ulster,  the  greeting  "Morrow, 
boy,"  or  "Morrow,"  is  common,  lie  will  see 
"oxter"  used  for  armpit,  "haggard"  for  stack- 
yard, and  so  forth.  Similarly,  in  Dr  P.  W.  Joyce's 
recently  published  "  English  As  We  Speak  It  In 
Ireland,"  he  will  find  tiiat  in  the  south  as  well 
as  in  the  north  the  people  use  such  plirases  as 
"  in  under  the  bed,"  "  never  let  on  "  (for  "  i)rctend 
not  to"),  "])old"  in  the  sense  of  "impudent," 
"  the  dear  knows  "  for  "  God  knows,"  "  bees  "  for 


xii         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

"is,"  "yous"  as  the  plural  of  "you,"  "wer"  for 
"our,"  "rinsh"  for  "rinse,"  "lep"  for  "leap," 
"by  the  hokey,"  "faith,"  "troth,"  "  heth,"  and  so 
on  infinitely.  With  regard  to  the  use  of  "  faith  !  " 
as  an  exclamation,  Dr  Joyce  quotes  a  correspondent 
who  declares  that  the  use  of  this  is  "a  sure  mark 
of  an  Irishman  all  over  the  world."  Take,  again, 
the  ap|)arently  insignificant  exclamation,  "  liii])]), 
hupp  !"  used  by  drivci's  all  over  Ireland  to  urge 
on  their  horses  :  it  looks  like  a  corruption  of  the 
English  word  "  up,"  but  Dr  Joyce  tells  us  that 
it  probably  comes  down  from  a  time  before  the 
English  language  had  even  been  invented.  "  In 
the  library  of  St  Gall  iu  Switzerland,"  he  informs 
us,  "  there  is  ;i  manusci'ipt  written  in  the  eighth 
century  by  some  scholarly  Irish  monk — who  he 
was  we  cannot  tell,  and  in  this  the  old  writer 
glosses  or  explains  many  Latin  words  by  corres- 
ponding Irish  words.  Among  others,  the  Latin 
interjection  ei  or  hei  (meaning  ho  !  quick  !  come 
on  !)  is  explained  by  upp  or  hupp." 

I  am  writing  a  preface  and  not  a  book,  however, 
and  the  proof  of  my  arguments  must  come  to  a 
temporary  and  sudden  end.  The  reader,  I  may 
observe,  can  easily  gather  sufficient  facts  for  himself 
in  any  good  library  to  convince  hiniselt"  twenty 
times  over  of  the  sense  of  what  i  say.  And  if, 
iu  the  course  of  his  researches,  he  should  discover 
anything  to  suggest  that  my  sense  is  all  nonsense, 
let  him  not  hesitate  to  write  a  wilderness  of 
prefaces  saying  so. 

ROBERT  LYND. 

June  1910. 


CONTENTS 

CHAT.  rAOK 

I.  The  Irishman:  Introductory  .  .         1 

II.  Farms  and  Farmers  .  .  .  .10 

III.  Marriages  and  Match-making         .  .        40 

IV.  Stories  and  Superstitions  (or  whatever 

YOU    LIKE   TO   CALL  ThEM)  .  .  56 

V.  Schools  and  Children          .  .  .82 

VI.  Wakes  and  Funerals           .  .  .110 

VII.  Priests  and  Tarsons             ,  .  .122 

VIII.   The  Ulsteuman's  Notoriety  .  .       151 

IX.  The  Irish  Gentry      .            .  .  .172 

X.  Town    Life,    with    a    Note    on    Public 

Life  .  .  .  .  .184 

XI.  Games  and  Dances    .  .  .  .198 

XII.  Food,  Clothes,  etc.    ....       204 

Xin.  Religion  .  .  .  .  .211 

XIV,  The  Lives  of  the  Workers  .  .       226 

xiii 


FAQE 


xiv         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

CHAP. 

XV.  Sinn  Ftis  :  The  New  Note  in  Politics  .      247 

XVI.  Politics  and  Gatherings  .  .  .262 

XVII.  Manners       .  .  .  .  .275 

XVIII.  Characters.     I.— The  Driver       .  .      285 

XIX.  Characters.     II. — The  Man  of  Secrets  .      296 

XX.  Literature  and  Music       .  .  .      305 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

1.  A  Farm  House  Interior  .  .       Frontispiece 

From  <'i  {ihotograph  by  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 

FAftNQ    PACK 

2.  A  CouNiY  Down  Faubi    .  .  .  .14 

From  a  iihotograjih  by  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 

3.  Bringing  Home  Turf  in  Donegal        .  .        16 

From  a  photograph  by  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 

4.  An  Aciiill  Boy    .....        32 

From  a  photograph  by  H.  Welch,  Belfast. 

5.  County  Antrim  Girls     .  .  .  .38 

From  a  photograph  hy  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 

6.  A  Gaelic  Story-Teller  .  .  .  .60 

From  a  photograph  by  Mrs  N.  F.  Dryhurst. 

7.  A  Sligo  Bog         .....        80 

From  a  photograph  by  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 

8.  Aran  Children    .....        90 

From  a  photograph  by  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 

9.  Farm  House  in  Donegal  .  .  .118 

From  a  photograph  by  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 


xvi         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

FACIHQ    PAOB 

10.  The  M'Kinley  Farm,  Dervock  .  .       146 

From  a  iiLotograpb  by  K.  Welch,  Belfast. 

11.  Fireplace  and  Dresser  .  .  .166 

From  a  photograph  by  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 

12.  Galway  Fish  Market  .  .  .  .178 

From  a  photograph  by  U.  Welch,  Belfast. 

13.  The  Treaty  Stone,  Lii\ierick  .  .  .194 

From  a  photograph  by  W.  bawrence,  Dublin. 

14.  Grinding  Corn  in  the  Old  Way        .  .       206 

From  a  photograph  by  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 

15.  CURRAOHS  .  .  .  .232 

From  a  photograph  by  1{.  Welch,  Belfast. 

16.  Mud  Cottage  near  Dublin      .  .  .      244 

From  a  photograph  by  R.  Welch,  15elfast. 

17.  An    Antrim    Farm    and    an    0[.d-fashionei) 

Cart 290 

From  a  photograph  by  R.  Welch,  Belfast. 

18.  Clonbur — a  Connaciit  Village  .  .       298 

From  a  photograph  by  K.  Welch,  Belfast. 


HOME   LIFE    IN    IRELAND 

CHAPTER  I 

THE    IRISHMAN  :    INTRODUCTORY 

The  Irishmau  is  dug  of  the  world's  puzzles. 
People  seem  to  be  quite  unable  to  agree  as  to  who 
he  is,  or  as  to  what  constitutes  his  Irishuess. 
Some  people  say  that  he  is  a  Celt.  Some  say  he 
is  a  Catholic.  Some  say  he  is  a  comic  person. 
Some  say  he  is  a  melancholy  person.  Others  say 
he  is  both.  According  to  some,  he  is  of  a  gay, 
generous  nature.  According  to  others,  he  is  a 
shrivelled  piece  of  miserliness  and  superstition. 
"  The  least  criminally-inclined  of  all  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Europe,"  declare  those  who  stand  up  for 
him,  and  they  have  ofHcial  statistics  on  their  side. 
A  murderer,  a  maimer  of  cattle,  a  carder  of 
women's  hides,  squeal  the  Kiplingesque  school  of 
critics,  and  they,  too,  have  ofhcial  statistics — very 
official  statistics — on  their  side.  A  missionary 
among  the  nations,  affirm  some  religious 
enthusiasts.  'J'ho  builbon  of  the  world,  cry  those 
who  are  less  likely  to  be  found  in  a  church  than 
in  a  music-hall. 

The  truth  is,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  nonsense 

A  1 


2  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

talked  about  the  "  real  Irishman  "  aud  the  "  typical 
Irishman" — to  mention  two  phrases  common 
among  thoughtless  people.  The  "real  Irisliman" 
is  neither  essentially  a  Celt  nor  essentially  a 
Catholic.  He  is  merely  a  man  who  has  had  the 
good  or  bad  fortune  to  be  born  in  Ireland  or  of 
Irish  parents,  and  who  is  intcr(!sted  in  Inland  more 
than  in  any  other  country  in  (ho  woild. 

Tlie  landlord  of  Norman  or  Saxon  descent  is 
quite  as  truly  an  Irishman  as  the  tenant-farmer 
of  Gaelic  descent,  provided  that  Ireland  is  the 
home  of  his  best  thoughts,  even  if  not  always 
of  his  body.  The  Orange  labourer  of  the  north, 
whose  ancestors  may  have  come  from  Sc<itland, 
has  all  the  attributes  ot"  an  irishman  no  less  than 
the  Catholic  labourer  of  the  west,  whose  ancestors 
may  have  come  from  Greece,  or  from  Germany,  or 
from  Spain,  or  from  anywhere  you  care  to  specu- 
late. Occasionally,  owing  to  political  bitter- 
nesses, you  will  find  a  Northerner  denying  his 
Irishness.  "  We're  j^higlish  in  the  north,"  a 
Deny  merchant  once  said  to  me,  and  indeed 
some  of  these  people  have  sung  "God  save  the 
King"  so  often  since  the  introduction  of  Mr 
Gladstone's  first  Home  Rule  Bill  that  their  blood 
now  refuses  to  flow  to  any  other  music,  and 
their  ears  are  deal"  to  the  songs  of  their  own 
valleys  and  hills.  Even  people  with  Gaelic  names 
are  to  be  found  now  and  then  denying  the  charge 
of  being  Irish  with  a  vigour  worthy  of  Peter's 
denial  of  the  accusation  of  beina"  a  Christian.     A 


THE  IRISHMAN  :  INTRODUCTORY     3 

friend  of  mine,  who  is  an  entliusiast  for  Irish 
things,  was  wandering  about  Tyrone  some  time 
ago,  wlien  he  fell  into  talk  in  a  hotel-bar  with 
a  labouring  man  who  gave  his  name  as  James 
M'C'abo.  "Well,  you  have  a  good  Irish  name, 
at  any  rate,"  my  fi'icnd  said  to  him  in  a  tone  of 
congratulation.  "Good  Irish  name  be  damned," 
retorted  the  other,  bursting  into  a  temper.  "  It's 
a  good  Protestant  name." 

Luckily,  this  kind  of  talk  is  becoming  rarer 
in  Ireland  every  day.  It  is  a  relic  of  the  days 
of  the  religious  wars  of  the  Tudors  and  the 
Stuarts  when  Catholicism  and  Irishism  were  both 
put  on  their  defence  in  Ireland,  and  as  a  result 
became  somewhat  confused  till  they  appeared  to 
be  ])ractically  tlie  same  thing.  The  Protestant 
religion  came  into  lichuid,  not  as  a  ])liase  of 
Christianity,  but  as  the  rebgion  of  foreign  in- 
vaders. Cojise(|uently,  among  the  Irish  people, 
Protestant  and  foreigner  came  to  mean  the  same 
thing,  and  in  the  older-fashioned  Irish  language 
they  are  denoted  by  the  same  word — Gall.  Simi- 
larly, (iaedheal  or  Gael  came  to  signify,  not  only 
an  Irislituau  of  the  Gaelic  stock,  but  an  Irishman 
of  the  Catholic  religion. 

I  remember  once  when  I  was  in  County  Sligo 
I  was  taken  to  see  a  herdsman  who  knew  Irish, 
in  order  that  I  might  listen  to  a  man  with  so 
fortunate  a  possession,  and  1  found  that  to  him 
Gael  meant,  not  an  Irishman  at  all,  but  a  Catholic. 
We   were  talking   about   Irish   things   over   a   sip 


4  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  whiskey  with  which  he  filled  two  small  delf 
cups  to  the  brim,  leaving  no  room  for  the  least 
drop  of  water,  and  1  was  telling  him  how  even 
manufacturers  and  business  people  now  recognise 
the  importance  of  the  language.  In  proof  of  this 
I  brought  out  from  my  pocket  a  box  of  Dublin- 
made  matches,  with  the  words,  "  Solus  na  nCTaed- 
heal "— "  The  Light  of  the  Gael  "—printed  on  the 
outside.  He  took  the  box  from  me,  and  looked 
it  up  and  down — I  did  not  know  that  he  could 
not  read  when  1  handed  it  to  him — and  then  he 
gave  it  back  to  me,  saying  that  he  hadn't  his 
spectacles  on  him,  and  would  I  mind  reading  what 
was  on  it  to  him.  T  read  the  words  carefully, 
"  Solus  na  nGaedheal,"  feeling  very  nervous  about 
my  accent,  and  he  said,  "  Ah,  that  means  '  The 
Light  of  the  Catholics.'"  At  this,  the  school- 
master who  had  brought  me  looked  both  surprised 
and  shocked,  for  he  was  the  most  generous  and 
hospital)le  of  men.  "  But,  John,"  he  protested, 
"  it  can't  mean  that,  Mr  Lynd  himself  is  a 
Protestant."  "  Well,"  declared  the  herdsman,  with 
a  kindly  twinkle  in  his  eye,  but  determination 
in  his  jaw,  "  he's  none  the  worse  for  that.  There's 
many  a  good  Protestant  Irishman.  P)Ut  that 
doesn't  change  the  meaning  of  words,  and  I  tell 
you  Gaedheal  means  Catholic."  I  think,  indeed, 
if  he  had  wished  to  say  "Irishman"  in  the 
Irish  language  he  would  have  used  the  word, 
"  Lireannach." 

It   is   curious   to   find  even  to-day  in   Ireland 


THE  IRISHMAN  :  TNTRODUCTORY     5 

an  occasional  person  of  one  idea  who  will  tell  you 
that  nobody  is  any  use  except  the  Gaels,  or  that 
nobody  is  any  use  except  the  Catholics,  or  that 
nobody  is  any  use  exce[)t  the  Ulstermen.  As  a 
rule,  people  who  talk  like  this  belong  to  an  old 
and  dwindling  school,  and  are  of  a  crankisli  nature. 
The  general  trend  of  Irish  thought  during  the 
past  number  of  years  has  made  for  the  breaking- 
down  of  all  such  barriers  of  mistrust  and  mis- 
understanding. 1  heard  from  a  national  platform 
an  ancient  man  of  wild  notions  call  upon  his 
audience  on  one  occasion  to  put  no  trust  in 
Protestants — "  they  will  betray  you,  they  always 
have  betrayed  you" — and  passionately  proclaim 
that  Ireland  must  look  for  salvation  to  the  *'  sea- 
divided  Gael"  alone.  Ilis  audience,  however, 
greeted  his  sentiments  with  no  enthusiasm,  but 
maintained  a  polite  approach  to  silence.  Similarly, 
I  have  heard  an  Ulsterman — ridiculously  enough, 
a  Catholic  and  a  Nationalist  too — speak  as  though 
all  the  southern  Irish  were  worthless  people. 
**  Between  you  and  me  and  the  man  in  the 
moon,"  he  said  once,  tapping  me  on  the  knee 
confidentially,  "  there's  not  much  worth  talking 
about  south  of  the  Boyne."  Of  course,  one  finds 
these  local  and  sectional  conceits  and  contempts 
in  all  countries.  In  England,  for  instance,  the 
Baptist  does  not  always  speak  flatteringly  of  the 
Methodist,  nor  does  the  Churchman  usually  speak 
flatteringly  of  either.  Manchester  and  Liverpool 
are  not  linked    together  in  a  mutual  admiration 


6  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

society,  and  the  Yorksbireman  is  not  a  permanent 
object  of  veneration  to  tbe  Londoner.  \n  tbe  same 
way,  tbere  are  Tories  wlio  deny  tlie  rigbt  ot"  tbe 
Radicals  to  call  tbemselves  patriotic  Englishmen, 
and  Radicals  who  think  equally  bitter  things  of 
the  Tories,  and  Socialists  who  place  Radicals  and 
Tories  in  one  basket  of  worthlessness.  In  Eugland, 
however,  these  differences  of  creed  and  outlook 
are  regarded  as  normal,  and  are  not  counted  for 
national  unrighteousness.  In  Ireland,  on  the 
other  hand,  let  one  man  speak  critically  of  an- 
other, and  immediately  we  have  lurid  pictures 
drawn  for  us  of  a  ])eople  with  a  g(iiiius  for 
dissensions  and  fighting,  as  tbougb  diilercuces 
of  opinion  were  a  thing  unknowji  in  civilised 
countries.  Political  necessities — to  give  a  flatter- 
ing name  to  a  bad  thing — have  led  to  every  fault 
of  Ireland's  being  seen  as  if  through  a  microscope, 
and  to  every  virtue's  being  seen  upside  down  or 
inside  out  till  it  seemed  equal  to  two  faults. 
Personally,  I  deny  the  existence  of  any  gulfs 
between  different  sections  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Ireland  which  need  prevent  us  from  regarding 
them  as  one  people,  just  as  we  regard  the  English 
or  the  French  or  the  Italians  as  one  people. 

This  belief  in  the  oneness  of  the  Irish  people 
will  colour  everything  I  write  in  this  book.  For, 
great  as  are  the  differences  between  the  people  of 
one  province  and  the  ])eople  of  another,  between 
the  people  of  one  creed  and  the  people  of  another, 
between  the  people  of  one  parish  and  the  people  of 


THE  IRISHMAN  :  INTRODUCTORY     7 

another,  tlie  things  which  unite  them  and  mark 
them  aa  belonging  to  one  ever-evolving  race  are 
more  numerous  and  more  remarkable  still.  The 
Cork  man  and  the  Belfast  man  realise  this  when 
they  meet  in  a  foreign  country.  In  England,  for 
instance,  (licy  feel  some  bond  of  fraternity  uniting 
them  to  each  other  different  from  any  bond  that 
may  unite  them  to  the  Englishman  or  Scotchman 
or  Frenchman,  or  any  other  of  the  strange  races. 
They  are  l)oth  Irish,  and,  even  if  they  have  not 
the  same  friendly  interests,  they  h;ivc  at  hvist  tihc 
same  things  to  quarrel  over — no  unim[)ort;int  tie 
in  a  worhl  where  most  peoj)le  persist  in  living 
dully.  Consequently,  when  I  hear  a  Belfastman 
speaking  contemptuously  of  Dublin,  I  do  not  take 
the  conversation  very  seriously,  and  when  I  hear  a 
Dubliner  speaking  contemptuously  of  Belfast,  1  do 
not  take  the  conversation  yery  seriously.  The 
kind  of  Irishman  who  (hjes  really  offend  me  is 
the  Belfastman,  who  speaks  contemptuously  of 
Belfast,  and  his  counterparts  from  other  parts  of 
Ireland.  Everybody  has.  met  the  escaped  Belfast- 
man  in  foreign  countries,  who  delights  in  depreciat- 
ing his  own  town,  because  he  thinks  that  it  is  the 
right  tiling  to  do.  I  have  almost  invariably  found 
him  a  useless  person  with  all  the  faults  of  his 
birth-place  and  few  of  the  virtues.  He  has  never 
felt  the  heart-beat  of  Ireland  or  the  thrill  of 
abundant  life  that  makes  the  laughter  of  chOdren 
in  Ballymena  of  one  spirit  with  the  singing  of 
birds   a))ove   the  beggars  on   Granard    door-steps, 


8  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

and  witli   the  shrill  shouts  of  l)oys  hurling  in  a 
Munster  field  when  a  goal  is  scored. 

My  theme,  tlieu,  in  this  book  will  be  the  people 
of  Ireland  and  their  oneness — oneness  of  customs 
and  character  and  interests  and  even  of  language 
traditions — their  oneness,  and,  within  the  circle  of 
that,  their  curious  variableness.  The  Irishman  of 
the  North  meriies  into  the  Irislmian  of  llie  ]\Iid- 
lands,  and  he  into  the  Irishman  of  the  South  and 
West,  as  naturally  as  a  similar  phenomenon  takes 
place  in  England.  If  you  travel  by  easy  stages 
from  the  Giant's  Causeway  to  Cape  Clear  you  will 
notice  how  beautifully  and  gradually  the  Scotticised 
accent  of  Antrim  and  Down  undergoes  change 
after  chano;e  until  it  is  transformed  into  the 
bubbling  brogue  of  Cork.  It  is  the  same,  if  you 
take  the  Irish,  instead  of  the  Anglo-Irish,  language. 
There  are  numerous  differences  of  accent — dialects 
we  call  them  in  Ireland — but  these  surface  differ- 
ences are  as  nothing  compared  to  the  essential 
unity  of  speech  that  links  the  four  provinces 
together.  Country  people,  who  have  not  travelled, 
are,  of  course,  inclined  to  stress  these  differences. 
If  you  go  to  Connacht  with  a  JMunster  accent,  you 
need  not  be  surprised  to  be  told  that  your  Irish 
is  not  Irish  at  all,  and  if  you  take  a  Connacht  turn 
of  speech  to  Ulster,  some  grey-headed  old  woman 
will  as  likely  as  not  shake  her  head  at  you,  and  tell 
you  that  Connacht  Irish  is  bad  Irish.  These  are 
comedies,  however,  which  will  always  be  with  us 
so    long    as    individual    patterns   remain   among 


THE  IRISHMAN  :  INTRODUCTORY     9 

countries  acd  meu.  I  know  my  arguments  could 
be  used — or  misused — to  support  a  good  many 
theories  which  I  do  not  wish  tliem  to  support. 
But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  put  them  forward  in 
proof,  not  so  mucli  of  the  positive  tilings  in  which 
I  believe,  as  of  some  negations  which  will  clear  the 
way  for  the  understanding  of  those  positive  things. 
I  wish  then  merely  to  enforce  the  idea  that  Ireland 
is  not  a  country  scored  and  riven  internally  by 
impassable  frontier  lines — that  the  common  talk 
of  the  "two  nations"  in  Ireland  is  an  exaggera- 
tion, and  leads  to  confused  thinking  about  the 
country.  1  hope  to  touch  on  this  point  more 
fully,  however,  in  later  pages  of  the  book. 

There    is    a    nursery-rhyme    in    Ireland    which 

runs  : — 

Ulster  for  a  soldier, 
Connacht  for  a  thief, 
Minister  for  learning, 
And  Leinster  for  beef. 

There  is  just  as  much  sense  in  this  as  in  most  of 
the  generalisations  we  hear  about  the  different 
parts  of  Ireland — the  dourness  of  Ulster,  the 
dishonesty  of  Connacht,  the  idleness  of  at  least 
the  other  two  provinces.  Almost  all  generalisa- 
tions, I  suppose,  were  in  the  beginning  born  of 
some  seed  of  truth.  Nearly  all  the  generalisations 
about  Ireland,  however,  have  grown  up  into  per- 
verted and  lying  shapes,  like  monstrous  light- 
hiding  trees,  and  in  their  branches  the  parrots  of 
the  nations  chatter  innumerable  foolish  things. 


CHAPTER  II 

FARMS    AND    FARMERS 

I  MET  a  lady  the  other  day  who  became  very 
sorrowful  over  the  condition  of  living  into  which 
the  Irish  farmer  has  now  fallen.  She  recalled  the 
days  of  her  girlhood,  when  the  house  of  the  large 
farmer  was  a  centre  of  hospitality  and  of  a  certain 
kind  of  culture,  in  those  days  it  was  not  a 
surprising  tiling  to  see  a  new  hook — even  a  good 
book — on  a  farmer's  table.  Nowadays,  one  is 
astonished  to  see  any  new  written  matter  there, 
except  "  The  Freeman's  Journal "  or  "  The  Northern 
Whig,"  or  one  of  those  useless  series  of  volumes  on 
religion  or  history,  of  wliicli  l)ook-pcdlars  contrive 
to  get  rid  on  the  instalment  system. 

This  lady's  lamentation,  I  believe,  had  a  heart 
of  truth  in  it.  It  was  not  merely  the  regret  of  one 
who  saw  the  past  in  rose-colour  and  the  present 
through  a  grey  rain  of  dullness.  If  you  go  into  an 
old  farm-house,  the  books  that  y<Mi  see  stored  away 
in  some  shabby  case,  and  the  prints  that  you  see 
hanging  on  the  walls,  tell  you  that  a  generation  of 
men  once  lived  here,  who,  if  not  supermen  of  taste, 
were  at  least  giants  in  this  respect  compared  with 
those  who  have  come  after  them. 

10 


FAUMS  AND  FARMERS  11 

The  Irish  farmer,  indeed,  the  respectable  son  of 
the  ragged  soldier  of  the  land  wars,  is  a  failure  in 
the  matter  of  fine  living.  When,  instead  of  being 
the  respectable  son,  he  is  the  respectable  transmo- 
grification of  the  ragged  land  soldier,  his  case  is 
little  bettor.  1  use  tlie  word  "  ra,oired,"  let  nie 
say,  in  praise  of  good  fighting,  and  not  in  any 
belittling  sense,  for,  like  most  of  the  talking  sort  of 
peo]ilc,  1  prefer  rags  to  selfish  respectability.  And 
scKisii  respectability  is  tiie  daiig(!r  wiiich  at  the 
present  UKnuent  more  than  any  other  threatens  the 
delightfidness  and  human  richness  of  Irish  country 
life. 

Of  course,  it  is  impossible  to  make  a  true 
generalisation  that  will  cover  all  the  farmers  of 
li'cland.  Vov  an  Irish  farmer  may  be  anything 
from  a,  ])riva.te  gentleman  on  a  small  scale  to  a 
labouring  man  on  a  large  one.  Farmers  and 
farmers'  families  make  up  the  greater  part  of  the 
varied  population  of  Ireland.  There  are  in  the 
country  nearly  600,000  farm  holdings  of  all  shapes 
and  sizes,  and  it  has  been  estimated  by  a  writer 
who  takes  the  average  family  as  consisting  of  five 
persons,  that  about  75  per  cent,  of  the  population 
are  directly  dependent  upon  the  soil.  Con- 
sequently, it  will  be  seen  that,  if  the  country  life 
of  Ireland  is  decadent  and  dull,  the  entire  life  of 
the  nation  is  in  peril  of  decadence  and  dullness. 

Personally,  I  believe  that  it  is  the  better-off 
farmers  who  arc  most  in  danger  of  losing  the 
colour    out    of   their    lives.       Suddenly    finding 


12         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

themselves  in  possession  of  their  own  Land,  or  at 
least  with  a  good  prospect  of  possessing  their  own 
land,  after  a  struggle  of  many  generations,  they 
are  like  men  who  have  come  upon  a  fortune,  and 
are  in  dread  that  some  neighbour  should  hear  of 
it,  and  cast  an  envious  eye  on  it.  They  feel  now 
that  their  crops  are  their  own,  that  their  cattle  are 
their  own,  that  their  money  is  their  own,  in  a  way 
that  was  never  so  before.  They  have  arrived  in 
the  Utopia  towards  which  their  fathers  strove 
as,  outside  Heaven,  the  chief  end  of  man,  and  they 
wish  to  rest  for  a  while  and  enjoy  the  sweets  of  it. 
Like  the  farmers  in  Mr  Shaw's  play,  "  John  Bull's 
Other  Island,"  they  just  want  tilings  to  be  left  as 
they  are,  without  change,  without  disturljance.  I 
was  talking  to  a  County  Mayo  farmer  sometime 
ago,  who  declared  in  a  whirl  of  not  very  sensible 
language  :  "I  was  always  an  extreme  man,  but  I 
don't  believe  in  going  to  extremities."  It  was  the 
protest  of  one  of  the  contented  "  haves  "  against 
the  boycotting  and  cattle-driving  practices  of  some 
of  the  discontented  "  have-nots." 

He  affirmed  that  men  of  property  had  now  no 
say  in  the  management  of  the  country — that 
public  life  was  in  the  hands  of  a  "  lot  of  lads  and 
tramps."  lie  said  that  he  would  like  to  see  the 
return  of  the  old  system  under  which  country 
government  was  in  the  hands  of  the  grand  juries 
instead  of,  as  at  present,  the  County  Councils. 
He  pointed  to  the  road  outside  his  house,  and 
declared  that,  under  the  old  grand  jury,  this  used 


FARMS  AND  FARMERS  13 

to  cost  £14  a  year  for  maintenance — £14,  if  I 
remember,  for  six  or  eight  miles,  but  that  now 
under  the  County  Council  it  was,  how  much  ?  I 
guessed  twenty  pounds,  then  thirty.  *'  Fifty-five," 
he  declared,  fixing  his  disgusted  withered  face  on 
mc;  "fifty-fifty  pounds."  1  said  that,  perhaps, 
the  road  was  better,  but  the  suggestion  made  him 
twist  his  neck  as  though  he  were  choking.  As  I 
looked  at  the  little  hedge  of  white  beard  that 
wandered  round  liis  throat,  and  his  figure  knotted 
in  tlie  chair,  nud  liis  pecvisli  old  eyes,  I  seemed  to 
see  in  him  the  tragedy  of  a  revolutionary — a 
revolutionary  who  had  aimed  too  low  and  got 
even  a  little  more  than  he  desired.  He  was  like  a 
once-starving  man,  who,  being  suddenly  well-fed, 
thought  it  irrational  that  anybody  else  should  go 
on  complaining  of  starvation. 

This  old  farmer  is  typical  of  a  good  many  of 
his  class,  I  do  not  mean  in  his  attitude  to  the 
County  Councils — most  farmers  will  admit  the 
virtues  of  these — but  in  his  general  conversation. 
The  truth  is,  the  Irish  farmer  has  l)een  demoralised 
by  three  great  forces — by  the  education  given  in 
the  National  Schools,  by  landlordism,  and  by 
agrarian  politics.  The  schools  de-Irishised  him  and 
BO  robbed  him  of  a  sort  of  culture,  which  made  the 
air  about  him  exhilarating  and  the  land  a  land  of 
memories  and  cnricliing  thoughts.  Agrarian 
politics,  taking  the  place  of  national  politics,  have 
trained  him  to  be  a  self-seeker,  a  materialist,  look- 
ing outside  his  own  country  to  a  foreign  Parliament 


14         HOiSlE  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

for  the  beginnings  of  justice,  and,  if  not  for  the 
beginnings  of  justice,  for  doles.  Landlordism, 
again,  by  fining  him  for  every  effort  he  made  after 
better  things,  by  a[)propriating  all  the  fruits  of  his 
labour  as  far  as  was  in  its  power,  trained  him  to 
cultivate  an  idle,  shiftless,  untidy  air,  and  to  avoid 
the  very  appearance  of  prosperity. 

L'cland  is  in  the  result  an  untidydooking  country, 
a  country  of  untidy  houses,  of  untidy  stone  walls 
and  hedges,  of  untidy  fields.  Li  many  parts  if  a 
gate  is  broken  down,  as  likely  as  not  it  will  be 
fixed  up  temporarily  with  bits  of  rope,  or  with  the 
help  of  stones  or  thorn  In-anclios,  instead  of  being 
properly  repaired.  Similarly,  if  a  window  is  broken 
or  a  spout  injured,  some  hopelessly  inefficient 
steps  will  often  be  taken  to  stave  off"  the  critical 
day  when  a  new  window  must  be  put  in  or  the 
spout  properly  seen  to.  People  who  do  not 
examine  into  the  causes  of  things  look  upon  this 
untidiness  of  the  country-side  as  a,  deep-seated  Irish 
characteristic,  born  of  Irish  blood  rather  than  of 
Irish  conditions.  There  could  not  be  a  shallower 
thought.  The  L'ish  farmer  originally  became 
untidy  in  self-defence.  lie  knew  that,  if  his  house 
looked  beautiful  and  his  hedges  trim,  the  quick 
eye  of  the  land-agent  would  soon  size  him  u])  as  a 
prosperous  man,  and  raise  his  rent  accordingly. 
Ever  since  the  1881  Land  Act  enabled  him  to 
stand  up  to  the  rent-raising  landlord  with  some 
prospect  of  success — certainly  since  the  l)eginuing 
of  the  present  century — there  has  been  a  slow  but 


FARMS  AND  FARMERS  15 

sure  tentleucy  to  improvement  in  the  appearance 
of  Irish  farms  and  farm-houses.  If  the  tendency 
has  been  too  slight  and  slow  for  the  censorious,  it 
is  because  the  traditions  of  generations  cannot 
suddenly  be  made  as  though  they  were  not,  and 
becniisc  the  liii-mcr  continued  to  suspect,  even 
under  the  1881  Land  Act,  that  the  landlord 
still  reaped  no  small  benefit  from  the  tenant's 
improvements. 

Now  that  the  land  is  coming  into  his  own  hands, 
the  Irish  farmer  is  showing,  as  I  have  stated,  a 
wonderful  instinct  for  improving  his  surroundings. 
The  farms  themselves  are  still  shaggy — I  say 
shaggy  rather  than  shabby — in  appearance,  but 
the  houses,  especially  the  houses  of  the  small 
farmers,  are  beginning  to  wear  a  new  air  of  bright- 
ness and  prosperity. 

One  thing  that  will  strike  you  about  the  houses 
in  most  parts  of  the  country — it  will  strike  you 
especially  forcibly  if  you  have  listened  with  an 
attentive  ear  to  all  the  old  falsehoods  about  Ireland 
— is  their  cleanliness.  I  do  not  mean  that  they 
arc  as  clean  as  a  new  })in  or  as  some  of  those  si)ick- 
and-span  hydrangia-guarded  cottages  in  North 
Wales.  But  they  are  clean  beyond  all  the  con- 
ceptions of  nearly  all  the  people  who  have  ever 
written  about  Ireland.  Ireland  has  always  been 
set  down  as  a  country  of  dirty  houses,  as  though 
people  living  in  London  or  Manchester  ought  to 
feel  almost  unwell  at  the  thought  of  it.  The 
picture  is  a  false  one.     I  am  sure  there  is  more 


16         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

dirt  in  London  or  in  JMancliostcr  than  in  all 
Connacht.  The  comparison  between  town  and 
country  may  seem  unfair  ;  but  dirt  is  dirt  wherever 
you  find  it,  and  there  has  been  too  much  uncon- 
tradicted nonsense  talked  about  the  dirtiness  of 
Ireland. 

If  I  seem  to  exaggerate  on  this  matter,  it  is 
because  I  wish  to  redress  a  balance  and  brino- 
the  truth  nearer.  Politicians,  I  believe,  have  for  a 
long  time  had  the  loudest  say  about  Ireland,  and 
they  have  almost  invariably  maligned  her  either 
out  of  love  or  from  malice.  Pro-Irish  politicians, 
wishing  to  make  a  pitialjle  and  sympathy-winning 
sliow  of  the  country,  have  dragged  forward  the 
dirtiest  and  most  dismantled  mud  hovels  as 
demonstrations  of  the  wretched  condition  of  the 
people.  Anti-Irish  politicians,  on  the  other  hand, 
have  called  up  these  same  dirty  and  dismantled 
hovels  as  witnesses  to  the  fact  that  the  Irish  are  a 
half-savage  and  worthless  people,  less  fit  than 
any  other  in  Europe  to  be  trusted  with  the  govern- 
ment of  their  own  land.  Thus  a  very  deceptive 
myth  has  been  created — a  myth  which  many  of 
us  even  in  Ireland  have  begun  to  believe.  All  sides 
have  agreed  to  judge  Ireland  by  its  worst,  and  have 
held  up  as  the  typical  Irish  home  not  anything 
like  the  average  Irish  home,  but  the  most 
tumbledown  and  ill-kept  Irish  home  they  could 
find. 

Irish  farm-houses  vary,  of  course,  from  imposing 
stone-finished   dwellings,    fitted    out    with   pianos 


\<A' 

18  HOME  LIFE  IN   IRELAND 

After  these  come  Daniel  O'Connell  aud  the  things 
that  grocers  give  away  at  Christmas,  and  occasion- 
ally portraits  of  royal  [)eo[)h;  like  Queen  Vi(;toria 
or  King  Edward  Vil.  These  royal  pictures  are 
sometimes  to  be  seen  in  the  same  room  with 
portraits  of  Wolfe  Tone  and  Emmet,  and  are  to 
be  taken  as  proofs  tliat  the  people  want  (theaj) 
decorations,  not  that  they  are  becoming  loyal  lo 
the  English  connection.  In  Unionist  homes,  of 
course,  they  have  another  meaning.  Here  they 
add  to  the  dulness  of  walla  already  made  dull 
by  framed  photographs  —  dismal  photographs 
dismally  framed — of  those  who  have  emigrated 
and  those  who  have  dieil.  In  the  Orange  homes 
of  Ulster,  too,  the  portrait  of  King  William  the 
Third,  blue-coated  and  on  a  white  horse,  takes 
the  place  of  the  portrait  of  Emmet,  and  the  Kev. 
Henry  Oooke,  the  genius  of  bigotry  and  debate, 
is  the  Presbyterian  substitute  for  Daniel  O'Connell. 
In  the  poorer  houses  the  black  mantelpiece  has  often 
as  its  proudest  ornament  a  c(jloured  delf  statue  of 
King  William  of  Orange  seated  on  a  charger. 

Many  of  the  houses  in  all  parts  of  the  country 
make  an  attempt  at  civilisation  and  liveliness 
with  pictures  taken  from  the  l^higlish  magazines 
— pictures  of  pretty,  llully  women,  pictures  of 
deanimalised  animals,  pictures  of  the  splendours 
of  war.  The  country  houses  are  not  so  bad  in 
this  respect  as  the  houses  in  town.  The  ugliness 
of  the  country  house,  in  other  words,  is  more  Irish 
and  therefore  less  deadly  than  the  ugliness  of  the 


FARMS  AND  FARMERS  19 

town  house.  But  they  are  both  tolerably — or 
intoleraljly — ugly. 

It  is  luy  strenuous  opinion  that  there  is  nothing 
in  the  world  more  essentially  a  national  matter 
than  taste — taste  in  dress,  in  food,  in  manners,  in 
household  arni.ugement — and  tl»;i,t  a  jH'.oph?  with- 
out natioiiality  must  always  Ije  a  people  without 
taste.  Ireland  is  a  country  whose  nationality 
has  Ijecomc  as  weak  as  watered  gruel,  and,  until 
this  is  made  stroni;-  and  I'oal  again,  as  1  believe  it 
will  be  with  the  help  of  tlie  Gaelic  spirit,  1  see  no 
prospect  that  Irish  farm-houses  will  become 
beautiful  and  colour-haunted  places,  inhabited  by 
distinctively-dressed  women  and  w^ell-mannered 
men.  Even  now,  if  one  wants  to  see  that  part 
of  Ireland  in  whicli  dress  is  least  dull  and  manners 
most  gentle,  one  must  go  to  the  most  impoverished 
and  most  Irish  districts,  like  Achill  in  the  west. 

Taste,  however,  in  the  sense  of  that  fine  spirit 
whicli  touches  nothing  that  it  does  not  adorn,  is 
a  rare  thing  anywhere  in  Ireland.  That  it  is 
growing  with  the  other  new  national  forces  is 
siiown  by  tlie  f;ict  that  every  day  it  is  becoming  a 
less  sur[U'ising  thing  to  see  a  few  lloweis  in  bloom 
outside  a  farmer's  house  or  a  labourer's  cottage. 
The  Orangeman  of  Ulster,  I  may  say,  had  always 
these  llowers  outside  his  window.  The  Orange 
lily,  flaming  and  erect  n[)on  its  stalk,  is  by  good 
fortune  the  emblem  of  all  to  which  he  clings  most 
passionately,  and  this  has  probably  encouraged 
him     in    the    taste     for    growing     flow^.rs.       If 


20         IIOINIE  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

Nationalism  luul  been  symbolised  by  a  rose  in- 
stead of  the  shamrock,  it  miglit  have  made  all 
tlie  dillcrence  in  the  world  in  the  i)[)pearan('e  of 
Irish  country  places. 

Tiiere  is  no  feature  in  the  economy  of  the  Irish 
home  which  has  been  more  commented  upon  than 
the  manure-heap  which  so  often  lies  in  shapeless 
squalor  not  far  from  the  door.  This  has  been 
pointed  to  as  a  breeder  of  disease— a  direct 
ancestor  of  consumption  and  the  direst  fevers. 
I  met  a  brilliant  doctor  some  time  ago  who 
quarrels  with  the  evil  fame  of  the  manure-heap.  He 
admits  its  ugbness  of  look,  and,  at  times,  of  smell, 
l)ut  lie  holds  that  its  iiiJhicnce  on  the  hcndtli  of  the 
pco})le  lias  been  greatly  exaggci'ated.  If  Irish 
farm-children  were  brought  up  on  good  food — if 
they  had  something  more  invigorating  to  eat  and 
drink  than  tea  and  white  bread  and  potatoes  and 
American  bacon — they  would  not  have  much 
difficulty  in  resisting  all  the  germs  that  a  manure- 
heap  could  nourish.  I  am  inclined  to  think,  too, 
that  if  the  Irish  were  not  the  worst  cooks  in 
Europe,  the  country  would  be  a  good  deal 
healthier.  Perhaps,  however,  this  applies  to 
farmers  of  the  middle  sort,  and  to  the  people  in 
towns  rather  than  to  the  poorest  of  the  jx-asantry. 
For  the  Irish  certainly  make  tea  adiniral)ly  and 
bake  admirably,  and  l)oil  and  fry  bacon  siitliciently 
well,  and  these  arc  practically  all  tlie  foods  with 
which  the  poor  have  much  acquaintance. 

Th(i  farmer  who  is  aljove  the  line  of  poverty, 


FARMS  AND  FARMERS  21 

however,  occasionally  gets  his  wife  to  experiment 
with  beef,  and  tlie  result  is  often  a  woe  to  the 
stranger.  Never  in  any  place  have  I  seen  such 
leathery  and  impracticable  gobbets  of  meat  as  I 
have  sat  down  to  again  and  again  in  the  houses  of 
small  Irisli  farmers.  Perhaps  the  meat  is  taken 
from  some  part  of  the  animal  that  the  townsman  is 
accustomed  to  scorn,  or  it  may  be  that  it  is  too 
fresh.  I  do  not  know.  I  cannot  believe,  however, 
that  any  meat  would  be  so  militantly  bad,  so 
defiant  to  tlie  human  tooth,  if  it  were  treated  with 
proper  gentleness  in  the  cooking.  Let  me  admit, 
on  the  other  hand,  that  there  are  many  exceptional 
houses  which  good  cooking  makes  pleasant  in  the 
memory,  and  that,  even  in  those  places  where  the 
meat  is  most  impossible,  they  can  nearly  always 
cook  a  clii('.k(>Ji  excellently.  It  is  all  a  matter  of 
training.  There  is  a  low  standard  of  taste  in  the 
country,  and  bad  cooking  is  but  one  feature  in  the 
general  disorder. 

While  on  the  subject  of  food,  I  may  mention  one 
curious  thing  about  the  tastes  of  the  country- 
people.  They  look  with  a  kind  of  modest  shame 
on  their  home-baked  bread  as  compared  with  the 
white  loaves  of  the  town.  More  than  once,  when 
I  have  chanced  to  have  a  meal  in  a  small  farm- 
house, have  1  had  to  listen  to  royal  apologies 
because  there  was  no  loaf,  but  only  home-baked 
bread,  to  sot  on  the  table.  Equally  odd  must  it 
seem  to  many  that,  not  even  in  the  poorest  Irish 
home,  will  the  people  dream  of  eating  so  passable 


22  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

a  vegetahle  as  turnip-tops.  I  remember  wlien  I 
came  to  Euglancl  first  and  had  turnip-tops  oflered 
to  me  in  a  restaurant,  I  felt  a  sort  of  disgust,  as 
thouoli  1  liad  been  asked  to  eat  some  indecent  tliino;. 
There  is  a  change  coming  over  frehmd  in  regard 
to  food  and  cooking  as  in  most  otlier  matters. 
Cookery  is  now  being  tauglit  as  an  art  in  the 
teclmical  schools  and  elsewhere,  and  if  the  tables 
of  some  of  the  farm-houses  are  not  sensibly  the 
more  aoreeable,  it  is  because  the  conservatism  of 
the  people  holds  out  against  new-fangled  things, 
even  when  they  are  sweet  to  the  taste.  I  lieard 
of  one  instance  in  which  there  was  a  more  absurd 
cause  for  tJui  new  talent's  hcMiig  left  to  rust  without 
use.  A  farmer's  daui>iiter  in  the  soutli,  havinix 
returned  home  with  her  training  in  coolvcry,  was 
permitted  amid  some  excitement  to  prove  lier 
gifts  in  getting  ready  the  midday  dinner.  She 
prepared  a  magnificent  steak  pudding,  the  like 
of  which  had  never  been  seen  in  the  iiouse  before, 
and  her  father  glowed  with  enthusiasm  at  the 
end  of  the  meal.  "  We  must  always  let  j\Iary 
do  the  cooking  after  this !  "  he  cried,  and  the 
happiness  on  the  children's  faces  echoed  him. 
All  the  greater  was  their  surprise  when  the 
woman  of  the  house,  hearing  this,  suddenly  lifted 
up  her  voice  and  wept.  "  Oh !  "  she  lamented, 
wringing  her  hands.  "  After  me  cooking  and 
slaving  for  you  for  twenty  years!  And  now  to 
have  my  own  daughter  put  against  me  1 "  And 
she  finished  with   a  flood  of  tears.     Stunned   by 


FAIMMS  AND  FAKMEUS  23 

the  new  twist  things  liad  taken,  the  family  made 
]jaste  to  comfort  her.  Tliey  weren't  thinking 
what  they  were  saying,  they  explained ;  tliey 
were  only  meaning  to  tell  Mary  how  they  liked 
her  cooking. 

Slowly  the  mother  dried  her  eyes  and  cheered 
up,  and  no  one  ever  dared  to  propose  Mary  as  family 
cook  again.  Tims,  in  at  least  one  liouse,  the  old 
cookery  won  its  decisive  battle  against  the  new, 
and  a  family  that  might  be  taking  in  health  with 
its  food  still  sits  down  at  meabtimes  to  IkmtI  ;i,nd 
knobl»y  inii.tlcr  swiniining  in  watery  gnivy.  liCt 
nic  warn  lasli  generalisers,  liowever,  that  this  is  not 
to  be  taken  as  a  picture  of  an  average  Irish  home. 

I  am  ab-aid  I  have  wandered  some  way  from 
the  point  which  led  me  to  speak  of  food  in  connec- 
tion will)  farms.  I  mentioned  it  chiefly  in  older 
to  bring  in  an  o])inion  that  bad  food — a.nd  Ijadly- 
cooked  food — is  the  cause  of  more  weakness  and 
disease  in  Irehind  than  all  the  obtrusive  manure- 
heaps  3'ou  will  see  between  the  house-doors  and 
the  roads.  1  think  the  clothes  of  the  people  are 
also  somewhat  to  blame.  Country  people  very 
rarely  change  their  clothes  when  they  get  a 
wetting  :  often  they  have  no  other  clothes  into 
which  to  change.  Children  and  grown-up  people 
go  about  in  the  rain  as  though  the  sun  were 
shining,  an<l  in  a  wet  country  like  Ireland  the 
result  of  this  is  bound  to  l)e  disastrous.  Add  to 
this  the  fact  that  in  too  many  ])laces  the  houses 
are  built  on  regularly-llooded  lands,  and  on   the 


24         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

marshy  edges  of  streams,  and   you  have  another 
fruitful  cause  of  Ijodily  ills. 

Poverty  and  the  want  of  an  enlivening  natujual 
spirit,  however,  are  tlie  real  cause  of  the  weakness 
of  Ireland.  If  disease  results,  for  instance,  from 
the  presence  of  an  animal  in  the  house  during  the 
winter  months,  this  must  be  put  down  in  some 
measure  to  the  generi)sity  of  very  poor  pe<)[)k!. 
One  has  heard  so  much  of  the  pig  as  an  inmate  of 
the  Irish  home  that  one  is  almost  inclined  to  put 
it  down  as  a  myth,  so  comparatively  rare  a  sight 
is  it  in  the  thirty-two  counties.  Thousands  of 
Irish  people  believe  that  the  household  pig  is  only 
an  English  music-hall  joke,  for  they  have  never 
seen  such  a  thing.  It  is  only  in  poor  and 
unsheltered  places,  indeed,  it  is  ever  to  be  found, 
and  then,  chiefly,  in  the  cold  stormy  times  of 
winter.  If  in  those  shrill  nights  and  days  the 
pig  is  admitted  to  the  comfort  of  the  hcartli,  it  by 
no  means  follows  that  the  house  is  turned  into 
a  pig-sty.  The  pig  is  not  necessarily  a  filthier 
animal  than  the  dog,  but  can  Ije  ecpially  accus- 
tomed to  habits  of  cleanliness.  I  knew  a  most 
refined  and  wealthy  lady  who  kept  a  pig  as  a  pet. 
At  the  same  time  I  am  not  going  to  argue  that 
the  very  poor  people  in  Ireland  can  fight  against 
the  dirt  of  circumstances  any  more  than  the  very 
poor  people  in  any  other  country.  Poverty,  wdieu 
she  settles  down  in  a  country,  always  ends  by 
bringing  in  her  little  sister,  dirt,  to  live  with  her. 
Crowded  houses  are  bad  enough  when  the  crowd 


FAIIMS  AND  FARMERS  25 

is  entirely  composed  of  human  beings.  They  are, 
in  the  imagination  of  sensitive  people,  intolerable, 
when  added  to  the  human  beings  are  animals — 
especially  farm  animals  like  pigs  and  cows — which 
must  at  all  costs  be  kept  from  perishing  in  the  cold. 

I  must  say,  however,  if  I  had  a  miserable  hovel 
and  a  pig,  and  had  not  the  means  of  putting  up  a 
second  miserable  hovel  in  which  the  pig  could 
enjoy  that  minimum  of  warmth  and  shelter  to 
whicli  even  j)igs  liavc  a  natural  claim,  1  would 
count  myself  more  cliaritable  to  give  the  animal 
a  corner  of  my  hut  than  to  send  it  out  to  a  death 
of  cold.  There  is  the  obvious  retort,  "  But  why 
keep  a  pig  ? "  Equally  to  the  point  would  it  be 
to  ask,  "Why  live?"  The  pig  and  the  potato- 
patch  are  among  the  first  of  the  assets  of  life  on 
the  small  farms  of  Ireland. 

It  is  impossible,  I  imagine,  for  any  one  who 
has  not  travelled  in  Ireland  to  realise  the  bad 
conditions  in  which  the  poorest  of  the  peasantry 
live.  I  might  almost  say,  in  which  all  the  country 
people  live,  for  Irish  farming  life  is  unsatisfactory 
from  top  to  bottom.  Especially  so  is  the  way 
ill  which  the  people  have  been  driven  out  of 
possession  of  the  good  lands.  Ireland  is  a  country 
in  which,  to  put  the  truth  in  an  extreme  way, 
all  the  land  not  worth  cultivating  is  cultivated, 
and  all  the  land  worth  cultivating  is  left  out  of 
cultivation.  It  is  a  country  in  which  the  farmer 
with  ten  talents  hides  them  in  a  napkin,  and  the 
peasant  with  only  one  talent — or  a  chipped  piece 


26         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  one — puts  it  to  the  most  marvellous  usury. 
There  is  no  parallel  in  Europe  to  the  state  of 
ill-cultivation  which  results  from  this  condition 
of  things.  Indeed,  as  one  interpreter  of  statistics 
has  put  it,  "such  a  fact  as  that  G3.1  per  cent, 
(nearly  two-thirds  !)  of  the  whole  country  should 
be  given  up  to  hay  and  pasture  is  unparalleled  in 
the  world."  For  the  rest  nearly  a  quaiter  of  the 
surface  of  the  country  is  barren  and  unfit  even 
for  pasture,  while  a  miserable  one-and-a-half  per 
cent,  is  given  up  to  "  woods  and  forests."  The 
remainder — about  I'J  [)er  cent.  —  is  tlie  dillicult 
kingdom  of  the  ])lough  and  the  spade. 

It  is  ail  old  story  that  nearly  all  lli<!  best  land 
in  ircilaiid  is  in  ])Ossession  of  bidlocks.  The  faliK^ss 
of  JMeatli  and  the  rich  glories  of  the  (Jolden  \'ale 
that  runs  across  Muuster  are  too  good  for  human 
beings.  So  human  beings  withdraw,^  with  some 
grumblings,  but  still  for  the  most  })art  courteously, 
to  America,  in  order  that  cattle  may  come  in  and 
possess  the  land  with  their  idle  strength  and  the 
will  of  God  be  accomplished.  Sometimes  the 
purseless  people,  gathering  from  some  vague  part 
of  their  souls  the  conviction  that  so  wasteful  a 
system  of  land-using  proceeds  from  the  will,  not 
of  God,  but  of  the  Devil,  take  it  into  their  heads 
to  protest  eliectively  against  sin,  and  a,  cattle-diivc 


*  This  is  less  true  of  the  Golden  Vale  tliau  of  I\reath.  In  parts 
of  the  (Julden  Vale  the  people  have  .shown  tlieiabelves  Jiiagnilicc-nlly 
tenacious,  and  no  district  in  Ireland  lias  lieen  mure  progressive  in 
the  matter  of  buildin"  lahourer.-*'  coLtayvs. 


FAllINIS  AND  FARMERS  27 

ensues.  A  caitlc-drivc,  it  may  be  noted  in  this 
connection,  means  simply  what  it  says — a  driving 
of  cattle.  It  does  not  mean  cattle-maiming  or 
any  other  kind  of  brutality.  There  is  more  cruelty 
to  animals,  1  imngine,  ])ractised  in  a  single  week 
by  the  Irish  mil way-(;()m[)anies,  with  their  iidiumiin 
methods  of  traus[)orting  animals,  than  all  the 
cattle-drivers  of  the  country  would  be  guilty  of 
through  an  entire  year.  Occasionally,  I  know, 
some  ill-balanced  person,  made  brutal  by  brutal 
circumstnnces,  creeps  out  in  the  night  to  wreak  a 
hysterical  revenge  on  the  dumb  beast  of  a  man, 
who,  he  thinks,  has  wronged  him.  Things  like 
this,  are  done  by  isolated,  ill-witted  individuals  ; 
they  are  not  the  characteristic  Irish  deeds  of  Irish- 
men. They  are  things  tliat  ha])pen,  as  Mr  R.  E. 
Prothero,  a  Conservative  Englishman,  shows  in 
his  "  IMciisaiit  Land  of  P^-jince,"  even  amona'  the 
most  humane  people.  Tliey  broke  out  like  a 
disease  among  the  gentlest  people  in  France — the 
people  of  Picardy — in  land- war  times,  just  as  they 
broke  out  during  the  eighties  of  last  century  in 
Ireland.  There  are  always  some  men  whom  excite- 
ment and  poverty  iwdkc  mad. 

To  return  to  the  Irish — or  anti-Irish — system  of 
land-using  which  gives  a  preference  to  bullocks 
over  men  and  women  and  joyous  children,  it  must 
be  admitted  at  once  that  the  cattle-drivers,  vaguely 
couscious  though  they  are  of  the  economic  wrong 
of  the  present  system,  would  not  necessarily  them- 
selves turn  that  economic  wrong  into  an  economic 


28         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

right,  if  tliey  came  into  possession  of  the 
rich  hinds.  Not  immediately,  at  any  rate.  The 
National  Schools  did  not  educate  them  to  be 
efficient  Irishmen — farmers  or  anything  else.  Pro- 
bably, until  Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  organisation  and 
other  agencies  have  spread  agricultural  common- 
sense  in  the  country,  the  cattle-drivers  would  be 
quite  as  uneconomic  farmers  as  the  red-faced 
grazier  who  rolls  about  the  country  on  his  car 
with  his  armed  policemen  following  him  on  their 
bicycles.  The  truth  is,  the  Irish  farmer  is  very 
often  ignorant  of  the  first  principles  of  agriculture. 
His  teachers,  whether  in  or  out  of  school,  never 
made  any  attempt  to  give  him  light  on  the  matter. 
In  many  parts  of  the  country  he  will  only  till  his 
land  when  it  is  too  poor  to  be  of  any  use  for 
grazing  purposes.  When  I  was  in  a  town  in  the 
southern  midlands  lately,  I  noticed  that  a  great 
deal  of  the  land  to  the  north  of  the  town  was  tilled 
while  to  the  south  nearly  all  the  fields  were  grass- 
green.  "  You  see,"  explained  a  friend  who  was 
with  me  ;  "  the  land  on  the  north  side  is  poor  soil, 
and  they  have  to  till  it." 

It  is  the  poor  people  on  the  poor  land,  who 
cultivate  the  ground  with  the  most  passionate 
earnestness.  Consequently,  it  is  in  the  poorest 
counties,  not  in  the  richest,  that  you  will  often 
find  the  greatest  press  of  life,  the  highest  social 
energy,  the  liveliest  minds.  I  had  rather  live  in 
the  most  congested  district  in  Donegal  than  on  the 
most  fertile   estate   in   Meath,   and   Achill   Island 


FAKMS  AND  FAllMEllS  29 

iuterests    mc    more   than   the    Golden    Vale.     In 
Meatli  you  may  walk  a  long  way   and  meet  no 
human  being  and  see  only  an  occasional  isolated 
human  haJjitation  amid  the  wastes  of  lavish  fields. 
The  loneliness  of  this  bullock-land  came  home  to 
me  most  overwhelmingly  when  1  was  told  recently 
how  a  visitor,  tramping  the  country  one  Friday, 
fell  in  with  a  herdsmen  and  began  to  talk  of  some 
one  who  had  lately  died.     The  stranger  asked  the 
herdsman   when    the   funeral   was   to   be,   l)ut  the 
herdsman  ]-c[)lied  how  would  he  know,  as  he  had 
seen  no  one  to  speak  to  since  he  had  been  to  Mass 
on  Sunday.      One  hears  a  good  deal  of  tlie  loneli- 
ness  of  Canadian   prairies,   but   the   loneliness   of 
some  Irish  pasture-lands  is  more  tragically  terrible, 
for  it  is  a  loneliness  ghost-haunted  by  one's  vision 
of   the    men    who    once   dwelt   there   with    their 
families  and  tlicre  flow  of  talk  and  their  little  cares. 
Compare  with   this  rich,  idle,  solitary    country 
the   small  brown    fragments  of  farms  that   crowd 
into  each  other's  sides  among  the  shelterless  hills 
of  Achill.     Here,    amid   the    gloom  and  the  dark 
Avind,  rises    a  land    populous   in    parts   with    cot- 
tages  as    a    city    with  human    beings.       It    is    a 
place  of  tiny  dwellings   and  tiny  farms.     Out  in 
the  fields  you  see  the  women  labouring  and  bring- 
ing wonder  into  the  rocky  darkness  of  the  island 
with  their  heavy  ])ctticoats  of  red  and  blue  that  you 
will  not  sur[)as3  for  colour  in  a  Titian.     The  men 
dig   the  earth  into   strange    shapes — furrows   and 
ridges   that  you    would    conceive    might  be    dug 


30  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

blindly  by  night,  Tli(3  social  spirit  is  here,  however, 
making  continual  war  on  the  Imnory  hiireness  of 
thino'S.  The  people  delight  in  dancing  and  song, 
and  old  men  scrape  a  living  from  twittering  fiddles 
on  the  earthen  cottage  floors  in  the  evenings.  Irish, 
of  course,  is  the  language  of  the  place,  and  Irish 
are  the  ways.  This  is  the  more  curious,  l^ecause 
no  part  of  Irehmd  sends  the  same  continuous  swarm 
of  people  to  England  and  Scotland  as  does  Acliill. 
Every  summer,  it  is  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to 
say,  the  population  of  Achill  flings  itself  into 
British  fields  to  help  with  the  potatoes  and  turnips 
and  harvests,  and  it  seems  as  though  few  but  old 
men  and  the  mothers  of  children  are  left  to  gather 
in  such  harvest  as  there  is  at  home.  Excursion 
trains  carry  the  young  and  the  strong  and  the  ad- 
venturous from  this  westernmost  part  of  Ireland  to 
Glaso-ow  or  Liverpool  for  a  fare  of  twelve  shillings 
— I  believe  there  is  even  a  boat  which  takes  a 
labourer  from  Westport  to  Glasgow  for  six  shillings; 
and  in  those  few  weeks  of  stoo})ing  labour  among 
the  potato  and  corn  fields  of  England  and  Scotland 
must  be  amassed  sufhcient  wealth  to  keep  the 
farms  at  home  out  of  bankruptcy  during  the  rest 
of  the  year. 

Sometimes  you  will  hear  foolish  people,  who  nuiy 
have  seen  an  Irishman  making  a  noise  outside  a 
public-house  in  Liverpool,  talking  as  though  the 
harvesters  were  a  pack  of  uproarious,  drunken, 
good-for-nothings  who  go  back  to  Ireland  as  poor 
as  they  left  it.     The  people  at  home  know  Ijetter. 


FAUINIS  AND  FARMERS 


31 


Tlie  shop-keepers  know  better,  for  they  allow  debts 
to  run  all  winter,  knowing  that  they  will  be  paid — 
with  a  little  interest  heaped-up — after  the  home- 
coming from  the  British  harvests.  There  are  said 
to  be  some  200,000  "uneconomic  holdings"  in 
Ireland.  Acliill  must  contribute  her  share  to  this 
figure.  It  seems  a  ludicrous  thing  that  people 
should  run  farms  which  do  not  pay  any  more  than 
they  should  run  shops  which  do  not  pay.  There  is 
a  certain  royalty  of  extravngancc  al)out  it.  Yet 
many  Iiish  fjirniers  could  nfivo-  make  ends  mccit,^ 
were  it  not  for  tlie  steady  gifts  of  sons  and  daughters 

*  The  following  budgetfs  of  ty]>ical  families  in  tlie  congested 
districts  were  collected  and  published  liy  Mr  W.  Micks  in  the  first 
Report  of  the  Congested  Districts  Board  (1892).  They  give  a  vivid 
idea  of  the  jxivcrty  of  some  of  the  Irish  farms. 

No.  1 

llKCEirTS  ANT)  Exi'ioNiUTunK  OF  A  FAUihY  in  onUnnry  circumstances, 

THE    lUOCEIfTS    T'.RINO    DERIVED    FROM   AGRICULTURE,    FiSHINa 

AND  Home  Industries. 


Rficeipfs. 

Expen 

diture 

Sale  of  heifer  or  bul- 

Rent . 

£2 

0 

0 

lock 

£4 

10 

0 

County  cess 

0 

5 

8 

Sale  of  live  sheep 

3 

15 

0 

'I'ea     ". 

5 

17 

0 

„     r'g  • 

3 

10 

0 

Sugar 

1 

19 

0 

„       eggs 

2 

4 

4 

Meal   . 

7 

14 

0 

„       (lannel  or  tweed 

3 

10 

0 

Flour 

1 

17 

G 

,,       com 

0 

15 

0 

Clothing 

6 

8 

6 

„       fish  . 

8 

0 

0 

Tobacco 

2 

7 

8 

„       knitting,  etc.    . 

1 

0 

0 

One  youn 

gP'g 

0 

15 

0 

lm])lc>nents 

1 

4 

9 

■^'^^     4     4  £30     9     1 

Home  produce  consumed  by  the  family  is  valued  at  from  £5,  lOg. 
to  £10. 


32 


HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 


who  have  gone  to  America.  Thousauds  of  others, 
like  the  Achill  people,  regularly  cross  over  to 
Great  Britain  and  raid  it  for  the  gold  and  silver  of 
subsistence. 


No.  II 

Receipts  and  Expenditdre  of  a  family  in  very  -poor  circumstances 

THE  Receipts    ijeing 

DEllIVED     F1U)M      AoUICUI,TUKE 

AND 

FlHIIINO. 

licccipts. 

I'Jxinnditufc 

Sale  of  calf 

£2 

0 

0 

Rent  .         .         .         . 

£1 

10      0 

„       two  sheep 

0 

16 

0 

County  cess 

0 

2     0 

„       pig  (profit) 

2 

0 

0 

Clerical  charges,  etc.   , 

0 

6     0 

„      M\ 

3 

0 

0 

Meal  .         .         .         . 

2 

0     0 

V        %'gs 

2 

0 

0 

Flour 

(Groceries,  etc.     . 

Clotliiiig 

Lights 

Utensils,  tools,  etc. 

Tobacco 

1 
0 
3 
0 
0 
1 

10    0 

10    0 

0     0 

5     0 

10     0 

G     0 

£9  IG     0  £10  19     0 

Home  produce  consumed  by  the  family  is  valued  at  from  £12  to 

£17. 

No.  Ill 

Receipts  and  Expenditure  of  a  I'-AiriLY  in  the  poorest  possible 

CIUCUMSTANCIW,  TIIK  UKCKIPTS  IiKlN(J  DEIUVL;!)  FUuM  AUUICUL- 
TUUE  AND  LaUOUU  IN  THE  LOCALITY. 

Receipts. 

Eggs  .        .        .        .£1 
Sixty  days   labour   at 

Is.  per  day       .         .     3 
Herding  cattle  .         .     4 

(irocei'ies    . 

£8     3     0  £11  9     0 

Home  produce  consumed  by  the  family  is  valued  at  about  £6. 
These  budgets,  by  the  way,  do  not  include  families  in    which 

there  are  migratory  labourers  who  bring  a  few  more  pounds  back 

from  Scotland  and  England. 


E. 

cpei 

(lit 

ire. 

3 

0 

Rent  . 

.£1 

0 

0 

County  cess 

.     0 

2 

0 

0 

0 

Meal    . 

.     f) 

17 

0 

0 

0 

(Mulliiiig      . 
(iroceries    . 

io 

0 

0 
0 

.,  ■',■'  :  ^:  !         ''V^ 


>  J 


"5 


FARMS  AND  FARMERS  33 

Three  years  ago,  the  Irisli  Department  of  Agri- 
culture issued  a  Report,  showing  the  number  of 
Irish  men  and  women  who  went  out  on  this  yearly- 
adventure  to  England  and  Scotland,  It  was 
estimated  that  the  number  of  Achill  workers  who 
t('.m[)orarily  left  Ireland  in  1905  on  this  errand 
was  between  1500  and  IGOO,  the  entire  population 
of  Achill  being,  I  believe,  between  6000  and  7000. 
The  term  "Achill  workers,"  however,  covers  others 
besides  the  people  of  Achill,  and  is  used  technically 
to  describe  the  lal)Ourcrs  from  Achill  and  neiirh- 
bouring  places  who  go  to  Scotland — and  especially 
to  Ayrshire — to  help  in  the  work  of  potato-lifting. 

These  labourers  are  engaged  in  squads  for  the 
season,  and  it  is  calculated  that  in  a  season  of  four- 
and-a-half  months  one  of  them  may  with  luck  save 
about  eight  pounds.  The  Achill  labourers  are  said 
to  be  distinguished  from  tlie  other  Irish  migratory 
workei's  in  several  respects.  Women  take  part  in 
the  adventure  as  well  as  the  men  ;  they  are,  if 
anything,  more  numerous  than  the  men.  Further, 
"  there  is  more  of  the  family  group  relationship 
among  the  workers,"  and  other  workers  are  not  in 
the  same  way  engaged  in  S(piads  anel  for  the  season. 
At  the  same  time,  I  imagine  that  a  good  many 
people  leave  Achill  for  Great  Britain  every  year 
who  are  not  classified  as  "  Achill  workers."  The 
Connacht  men  who  go  to  England  must  include  a 
share  of  them,  for  1  have  talked  with  men  in  Achill 
familiarly  about  England  and  one  of  them  even 
sang  me  a  song  about  "  Sweet  Liverpool." 
c 


34         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

The  Counacht  man  with  tlie  keenest  eye  to 
prosperity  is  said  to  go  to  Lancasliire  for  the 
haying,  then  to  Lincolnshire  or  Caniljridgeshire 
for  the  corn  harvest,  and  alter  that  to  Warwick- 
shire or  Staflbrdshire  for  the  potato-lifting.  If  he 
has  a  saving  disposition,  and  is  fortunate  enough 
to  have  no  fortnight's  spell  of  unemployment,  lie 
may  be  able  to  take  £20  home  with  him  as  the 
result  of  five  months'  work.  The  number  of 
labourers  who  left  Ireland  in  1905  to  help  in  the 
work  of  British  farms  was  14,830.  Mr  W.  G.  S. 
Adams,  the  statistican  who  prepared  the  Report 
for  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  estimates  the 
savings  brought  back  (or  sent  back)  by  all  these 
])eople  to  Ireland  in  a  year  at  about  £275,000. 
A  heroic-looking  sum,  which  does  infinite  credit 
to  the  Irish  peasant  but  reflects  somewhat  on  a 
system  which  leaves  the  fields  of  Ireland  deserted 
and  unprofitable. 

The  lives  of  the  majority  of  these  labourers  and 
of  many  of  the  small  farmers  of  the  west  of 
Ireland,  I  think,  are  the  strongest  disproof  that 
could  be  desired  of  the  common  theory  that  the 
Irish  are  by  nature  a  lazy  people.  "The  western 
peasantry,"  declared  Sir  Horace  riunkett,  in  a 
recent  article  in  "The  Nineteenth  Century,"  "when 
working  for  wages  in  ]^]ngland  and  Scotland,  or 
engaged  in  a  struggle  for  bare  life  in  almost 
impossible  physical  surroundings,  develop  surpris- 
ing industry  and  resourcefulness."  Another  close 
observer,  the  editor  of  "The  Irish  Nation,"  wrote 


FARMS  AND  FARMERS  35 

the  other  tlay  in  a  similar  mood  :  "  The  Connemara 
man's  capacity  for  spade-work  on  his  own  soil,  to 
which  he  is  so  intensely  devoted,  is  almost 
miraculous."  I  remember  some  years  ago  a 
friend  of  mine,  a  Unionist  and  a  doubter  of 
Ireland,  went  to  Donegal  on  some  agricultural 
business  for  a  Dublin  Castle  department,  and  came 
back  with  the  same  story,  "  I  used  to  believe 
that  all  the  Irish  were  lazy,"  he  wrote  to  me, 
"  but  since  I  came  to  Donegal  I  have  seen  men 
forcing  a  livelihood  out  of  ])alches  of  rocks  and 
stones,  where  any  other  people  I  ever  met" — and 
my  friend  had  enthusiastic  experience  of  farm- 
work  both  in  England  and  Scotland — "would 
have  thrown  themselves  over  the  cliffs  in  despair." 
I'he  truth  is,  tlicre  is  plenty  of  energy  in  Ireland. 
It  is,  however,  as  often  as  not,  energy  wasted 
through  ignorance  or  through  want  of  capital  or 
because  the  Irish  farmer  is  most  demoniacally 
enei'getic  where  being  energetic  is  least  worth 
while.  Tbe  tragedy  of  Ireland,  indeed,  is  not  so 
much  the  tragedy  of  want  of  character — though  it 
is  partly  that — as  the  tragedy  of  waste  of  character. 
Ireland  is  a  country,  not  only  of  wasted  fields, 
but  of  wasted  men  and  women.  And  of  all  the 
conditions  that  waste  the  men  and  women  of  the 
nation  there  is  none  more  wasteful  than  this 
system  of  settling  them  on  small,  hard-hearted 
farms. 

Sir    Horace     Plunkett,    whom    I    have    quoted 
already — he  is  one  of  the  few  writers  worth  quot- 


36  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

ing  about  Ireland — has  again  and  again  drawn 
attention  to  this  wasteful  sort  of  land-distril)ution. 
It  is  especially  wasteful  because,  not  oidy  are  the 
holdings  in  the  poor  districts  absurdly  small,  but 
frequently  they  lie  about  in  scattered  parts  like 
the  torn  limbs  of  Pentheus.  "  Often,"  as  Sir 
Horace  puts  it,  "a  holding  of  three  or  four  acres 
will  be  divided  into  as  many  as  a  dozen  or  twenty 
patches,  lying  intermingled  with  patches  held  by 
other  tenants."  It  is  like  a  child's  puzzle  of  Find 
the  Farm.  More  inconvenient  and  more  primitive 
still  is  it  when  the  fragmentary  estates  are  shaken 
up  regularly  in  the  basket  and  redistributed  accord- 
ing to  the  system  known  as  "rundale."  I  re- 
member when  I  was  drivino-  ulon2;  the  coast  road 
on  the  north  of  Donegal,  one  day,  I  noticed  the 
fields  running  up  from  the  side  of  the  road  in 
little  lean  strips,  looking  much  as  I  had  always 
pictured  the  lands  of  village  communities  in  my 
imagination,  exce])t  for  their  ill-fed  a[)pearance.  I 
asked  a  neighbour  the  meaning  of  these  strange 
shapes.  "Well,"  he  said,  "they  divide  it  like  that 
so  as  to  make  sure  everybody  has  a  good  bit." 
One  cannot  help  having  a  grave  doubt  as  to  their 
success  in  this  laudable  aim. 

I  will  say  nothing  more  alxjut  the  Irish  farmer 
here,  but  I  suspect  he  will  appear  in  a  good 
many  of  the  succeeding  chapters.  I  hope  I  have 
been  fair  to  him.  I  only  wish  the  generations  had 
treated  him  less  scurvily.  Ireland  of  the  coming 
times  must  be  built  largely  in  farm-houses  and  in 


FARMS  AND  FARMERS  37 

labourers'  cottages,  aud  therefore  the  farmer  and 
the  farm-labourer  are  to  me  potential  heroes.  The 
building  of  Ireland,  however,  will  be  at  the  hands 
of  a  new  race  of  men,  more  cultured,  more  in- 
dependent, more  tolerant  and  at  the  same  time 
more  intolerant,  tlian  the  present.  Ireland  has 
csc'iped  the  dcliumanising  shock  of  the  Ijukistrial 
Eevolution.  Sli-e  will,  I  believe,  discover  an 
industrial  life  tliat  is  nearer  the  life  of  the  farms 
than  is  tlie  industrial  life  of  most  western  countries 
at  present.  She  will  fill  her  countrysides,  1  trust, 
with  energy  and  music  and  exuberant  living,  and 
in  doing  this  will  beat  out  a  new  civilisation  upon 
the  anvil  of  the  world. 

I  had  better,  perhaps,  say  before  closing  this 
chapter,  that  there  arc  many  country  places 
in  Ireland  where  the  binds  are  rich  and  yet 
not  given  up  to  death  by  grazing,  but  are  cul- 
tivated as  well  as  the  means  of  the  occupier 
will  permit  on  a  common-sense  system  of  rota- 
tion of  crops  (though  it  is  surprising  to  see  how 
the  principle  of  the  rotation  of  crops  is  ignored 
in  some  districts  which  have  a  fairly  (;omfortal)le 
look.)  TlicsG  farms  have  well-kept  hedges  and 
iron  gates  that  swing  clear  on  hinges  of  prosperity. 
The  farmers'  carts  lumber  along  the  roads  with 
brightly-painted  red  and  blue  cribs.  The  harness 
on  the  horse  is  not  make-shift  but  stout  and  well- 
kept.  The  potato-plants  are  sprayed  carefully  to 
a  blue  tint  with  the  copper  sulphate  mixture  to 
keep  away  the  blight.     Even  on  the  careless  farms, 


38  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

however,  potato  spraying  is  common,  for  very  few 
farmers  entertain  the  early  religious  objection  of 
one  stout  conservative  that  to  put  chemicals  on 
the  potatoes  was  an  interference  with  the  will  of 
God.  The  farm-house  of  the  prosperous  sort  has 
little  plantations  of  trees  around  it,  and  an  orchard 
and  flower-beds,  and  often  a  lawn  for  games. 
The  houses  are  stone-finished  and  four-square  and 
roofed  with  slate — not  so  beautiful  as  the  old 
rain-marked  thatched  houses,  perhaps,  but  much 
more  prosperous  and  settled-looking.  Even  in 
these  places  of  success,  however,  the  atmosphere 
of  sleepy  fatness  which  you  will  sometimes  sec  in 
the  south  of  l*hiuland  is  uncommon.  'I'lie  diller- 
ence  between  Ireland  and  the  soutli  of  England, 
I  should  say,  is  the  difference  between  a  dreaming 
country  and  a  sleepy  country.  Not  that  either 
Ireland  or  the  south  of  England  can  be  compre- 
hensively defined  in  these  phrases,  but  there  is  an 
element  of  truth  in  the  contrast. 

1  may  note  another  thing.  Irish  countrysides 
are  so  difterent  from  each  other  that  it  is  not  easy 
to  find  an  interpreting  word  which  will  cover 
them  all.  Still,  there  is  one  thing  which  gives  a 
unity — a  personality,  as  it  were — to  freland.  It 
is  the  glory  of  liglit  which  com(!H  towards  evening 
and  rests  on  every  field  and  on  every  hill  and  in 
the  street  of  every  town  like  a  strange  tide. 
Everywhere  in  Ireland,  north,  south,  east,  and 
west,  the  evening  air  is,  as  a  fine  living  poet  has 
perceived,  a  shimmer  as  of  diamonds.     It  gives  a 


■•A 


*^,',     ,  J     .   *>',;     ..•,V 


FAHMS  AND  FAllMERS  39 

new  woiKlcrfulncss  to  the  untidy  farms,  to  the 
horses  out  in  the  fields  as  they  munch  the  darken- 
ing grass  with  a  noise,  to  the  carelessly  clad 
farmer  hnngiiig  over  a,  gate  witli  invisible  lapwings 
crying  a])()V(>  his  head,  to  the  stained  white  little 
house  with  its  oil-lamp  not  yet  lit,  and  tlie  glow 
of  the  turf-fire  growing  momently  stronger.  I 
believe  and  hope  that  this  light  is  the  syndjol  of 
some  good  thing  whicli  will  one  day  find  its  way 
into  tlie  l)reast  and  limbs  of  the  Irish  country- 
maiS  and  make  him,  not  oidy  an  imaginative  and 
therefore  progressive  farmer,  but  a  man  of  high 
dreams  and  a  high  heart  who  will  esta1)lish  in 
Ireland  a  kingdom  of  the  spirit,  beautiful  and 
adventurous. 


CHAPTER  III 

MARRIAGES    AND    MATCH-MAKING 

It  is  unlucky  to  niiu-ry  for  love,  aceoi'diiig  to  nu 
Irish  proverb.^  Irchmd,  i[^  oue  cau  trust  the 
general  belief,  is  a  land  of  marriages  of  convenience 
rather  than  of  marriages  of  romance,  and  uu- 
doubtedly  it  is  also  a  laud  of  happy  marriages^ 
Cousequently,  the  proverb  seems  to  have  a  kind 
of  negative  juHtification.  I  tliiidv  my.siilf  thai 
there  has  been  a  good  deal  of  exaggeration  as  to 
the  extent  to  which  tlie  match-makiug  custom 
prevails  in  Ireland.  Certainly,  there  has  been 
some  exaggeration  regarding  the  evil  eflects  of 
the  custom.  Still,  to  any  one  who  res])ects  the 
economic  or  social  independence  of  woman,  it  is 
an  uncomfortable  thing  that  a  custom  of  this  sort 
should  be  so  general  as  it  is,  even  if  it  is  not  a 
frequent  begetter  of  tragic  consequences.  The 
mind  of  young  Ireland  is  at  the  present  moment 
in  the  beginnings  of  revolt  against  it.  In  ancient 
Ireland,  it  is  interesting  to  note,  it  was  the  man 
who  always  brought  the  marriage  portion — not 
the  woman,   as  it  is  at  present.     As  this  was  a 

1  A  contradictory  proverb  on  the  same  subject  runs  :  "  Marry 
for  love,  and  induster  for  riches." 

40 


MARRIAGES  AND  MATCH-MAKING  41 

survival  from  times  when  men  bought  their  wives, 
the  modern  method  must  be  considered  on  the 
whole  as  an  advance  on  it.  At  the  same  time, 
the  older  system  had  many  points  of  superiority. 
Under  it  a  certain  ainount  of  tlie  marriage  portion 
became  the  woman's  to  do  witli  as  she  liked. 
Married^  women's  property  was  secured  to  them 
in  Ireland  many  centuries  before  the  Married 
Women's  Property  Act  conferred  equal  rights 
upon  women  in  Ei)gland.  Tlic  present  system  in 
Ireland  works  out  less  advantageously  for  women. 
Now,  it  is  the  husband  who  a[)propriates  the 
marriage-portion,  or  most  of  it.  Sometimes,  he 
even  uses  the  portion  which  his  wife  brings  him 
to  marry  off  his  sisters.  And  so  the  same  fortune 
may  play  a  part  in  the  making  of  many  marriages, 
and  pass  from  man  to  man,  almost  intact. 

Match-making,  of  course,  is  known  in  every 
country  where  money  is  reverenced,  and  it  is  not 
only  in  Ireland  that  men  marry  with  an  eye  to 
a  dowry.  Still,  Irish  match-making  is  a  distinct 
institution.  It  is  not  an  unheard-of,  though  it 
is  an  uncommon  thing  in  rural  Ireland  for  the 
woman  never  to  have  seen  the  man  she  is  going 
to  marry  until  he  calls  at  her  father's  house  to 
take  away  the  dowry.  Cases  even  have  been 
known  where  the  girl  had  not  set  eyes  on  her 
husband  till  the  marriage-morning.  The  marriage 
is  frequently  arranged  without  any  reference  to 
her  tastes  and  wMslies.  Her  father  comes  home 
one  evening  and  tells  her  that  he  has  got  a  bus- 


42  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

band  for  her,  and  she   can  but  wait  in   patience 
and  wonder  till  the  young  man  calls. 

Marriages  like  these  are  brought  about  by  a 
curious  machinery.  It  is  often  ditticult  to  know 
who  first  suggests  them.  Sometimes,  it  is  an  old 
busy-body  with  an  appetite  for  glory.  lie  casts 
his  glance  at  a  young  girl  and  learns  l)y  some 
means  or  other  the  amount  of  the  rortuiie  which 
her  father  is  willino-  to  aive  with  her.  After  this, 
he  puzzles  his  brains  to  find  a  suitaljle  husband. 
He  picks  out  some  fjirmer  of  su])stance  and 
broaches  the  matter  to  liim  in  hints,  say,  during 
a  drink  at  a  fair.^  If  tin;  fai'incr  scicms  inclined 
ibr  the  marriage-,  the  niat(;h-inak(;r  g()(\s  oil'  and 
arranges  a  confereiK-ci  beLw(;en  him  and  the  girl's 
father.  It  is  then  the  bargaining  begins,  the 
girl's  father  doing  his  utmost  to  lessen  his  pro- 
spective son-in-law's  demands  by  it  may  be  fifty 
sovereigns  or  it  may  be  a  cow.  Indecent  scenes 
of  heat  and  miserly  excitement  in  connection  with 

*  Mr  Stei)lien  Qwynn,  in  "  A  Holiday  in  Connemara,"  gives  a 
description  of  a  match-making  party,  in  which  eight  or  ten  of  the 
boy's  friends  called  at  the  girl's  house  and  met  an  e(|ual  number 
of  her  people.  "  The  host  sat  at  the  head  of  the  centre  table  ;  ou 
his  right  was  the  suitor's  spokesman,  on  his  left  the  bride's  spokes- 
man." This  curious  parliament  settled  the  terms  of  the  marriage. 
"  Lastly,  tin;  father  dealt  with  the  i|iu;stion  of  the  ceremonial  heifer, 
which  is  always  given  witli  a  lu'ide  by  any  fatlier  who  wi.-ilies  to 
hold  up  his  head  in  the  country.  He  must  buy  one,  he  said,  having 
no  heifer  beast  that  he  would  think  good  enough  to  send  with  his 
daughter."  The  girl's  mother  was  unollicially  present  during  the 
proceedings  in  a  wall-cupboard  behind  curtains.  The  evening 
ended  in  a  dance,  the  old  men  sitting  over  their  liquor  at  a  table 
in  the  corner  till  morning. 


INIATIRI AGES  AND  MATCH-MAKING  43 

these  preliminary  meetings  are  a  favourite  subject 
with  Irish  novelists,  and  indeed  there  is  plenty  of 
material  both  for  satire  and  tragedy  in  the  match- 
making business.  Still,  I  think  tlie  novelists  ex- 
aggerate the  dark  side.  If  the  custom  were 
{dtogetlic]'  cruel  and  scHish  in  practice,  Irish  homes 
would  not  be  so  full  of  a  pleasant  atmosphere  of 
affectiouateness  as  they  usually  are. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  custom  of  match- 
making does  not  often  seem  to  involve  the  forcing 
of  husl)ands  on  unwilling  girls,  as  we  might  at 
first  think  would  be  probable.  Girls,  1  imagine, 
are  not  forced  into  marriage  against  their  will  in 
Ireland  more  frequently  than, in  other  countries. 
If  the  girl  is  not  always  at  liberty  to  choose  a 
liusband,  she  is  generally  at  liberty  to  refuse  a 
husband  she  does  not  want.  I  know  a  girl  who 
had  to  leave  home  in  order  to  escape  being  married 
to  an  old  man  with  money,  who  had  been  afraid 
to  get  married  till  his  mother  died,  but  the 
situation,  I  believe,  is  not  particularly  Irish. 
The  very  fact  that  the  girls  can  and  do  leave 
their  homes  so  freely  is  a  proof  that  Irish  women 
are  not  so  slavishly  dependent  on  their  fathers 
as,  in  the  dislike  of  match-making,  one  may  be 
inclined  to  think.  Very  few  of  them  find  it 
necessary  to  leave  their  homes,  even  if  they  refuse 
to  fall  in  with  their  father's  choice  of  a  husband 
for  them.  The  ordinary  afi'ectionate  father  will 
be  guided  by  his  daughter's  preference  in  arranging 
a  match,  and  so  it  comes  about  that,  even  where 


44         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

the  custom  of  match-making  prevails,  the  young 
people  in  kindly  households  choose  their  own 
husbands  or  wives  as  unconstraiuedly  as  if  they 
were  in  America. 

Perhaps,  it  is  the  husband  rather  than  the 
father  who  is  the  least  commendable  person  in 
many  country  marriages.  Money  is  often  a  rare 
and  precious  thing  to  a  young  farmer,  and  since 
it  is  the  custom  to  give  dowries,  a  marriage 
without  a  dow^ry  would  seem  to  him  to  be  lacking 
in  one  of  its  most  agreeable  incidents  just  as  a 
marriaf][e  without  a  weddino--dress  would  be  re- 
garded  as  tragically  imperfect  by  a  bride.  High 
as  may  be  his  ideal  of  the  purity  of  the  home, 
his  ideal  of  man-iagc  is  often  only  an  ideal  of 
convenience  and  comfort.  Consequently,  he  does 
not  feel  that  he  is  belittling  either  himself  or  the 
woman  he  marries  in  giving  preference  to  girls 
in  proportion  to  the  fortunes  they  bring.  Like 
all  men,  of  course,  he  will  take  a  good-looking 
woman  with  a  smaller  fortune  than  he  will  expect 
with  a  plain  one ;  for  the  Irish,  I  think,  are 
beyond  most  people  lovers  of  personal  beauty..,. 
Still,  it  is  often  said  that  a  plain  woman  with  a 
bit  of  money  has  a  better  chance  of  a  good 
marriage  than  a  handsome  woman  with  none. 
Sometimes,  when  a  very  plain  woman  is  mentioned, 
you  will  hear  remarks  such  as:  "It  will  need  a 
good  lump  of  money  to  get  her  a  husband."  But, 
the  money  being  sufficient,  the  husljand  will 
ultimately  turn  up  even  for  her. 


MAURI  AGES  AND  MATCH  MAKING  45 

Mauy  girls,  knowing  tlie  demands  of  husbands, 
do  not  wait  for  their  fathers  to  make  matches  for 
them.  They  go  out  to  America  or  elsewhere  and 
shive  and  scrape  till  they  have  a  little  treasure 
collected,  and,  a  few  years  after  their  departure 
from  home,  they  appear  in  their  native  parish 
again.  It  soon  becomes  known  that  they  have 
a  little  money  put  by  and  are  willing  to  settle 
down,  should  a  suitable  home  be  offered.  Re- 
tui-ncd  (Mnii;i;ints  of  this  sort  ;i,n;  not  at  ;dl 
iinconmion  in  purls  of  the  west.  Irish  girls  would 
rather  marry  Irish  husbands  than  Americans  any 
day,  though,  it  is  said,  they  are  generally  deter- 
mined to  take  no  husband  who  is  not  worthy  of 
the  fortune  they  have  earned  with  so  much  lal)our 
and  adventure.  If  a  girl  who  has  l)eon  to  America 
finds  after  a  inonlli  or  two,  or  a  year  or  two,  of 
waiting  at  home  that  no  suitable  husband  is  to 
be  had,  she  as  likely  as  not  packs  up  her  trunk  and 
again  steams  olf  for  New  York  with  an  invincible 
heart.  Her  courage  and  determination  will  appear 
comical  or  tragical,  according  as  you  consider  her 
an  isolated  and  ambitious  figure  or  a  symbol  of 
the  eternal  Odyssey  of  Ireland — the  Odyssey  that 
does  not  end  in  a  return. 

With  regard  to  the  girl  who  has  come  home 
from  America,  I  may  say  that  there  are  two 
()j)inions  about  lier  in  rural  Ireland.  Progressive 
young  farmers  arc  nither  attracted  by  her,  because 
trav(d  has  sharnejied  h(U'  iutelli<'en(;e  and  Lauirht 
her   many  desirable  things  about   food  and  dress 


46         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

and  housekeeping.  She  is  awake  and  anil)itiou3 
and  is  a  wife  of  whom  one  may  l)e  proud  before 
one's  neighbours.  Other  peophi  take  a  less 
favourable  view  of  her.  They  say  that  America 
has  spoiled  her,  and  taught  her  only  airs  and 
extravagance  and  that  she  is  no  longer  fit  to  be 
the  wife  of  a  sim])le  man.  "  Better  one  pound 
of  Irish  money  than  ten  of  American.  That's  what 
all  the  people  about  here  will  tell  you,"  said  a 
cross-looking  old  man  who  spoke  to  me  on  the 
subject  one  day.  He  meant,  of  course,  that  an 
Irish-American  girl  would  run  her  husband  into 
ten  times  as  much  expense  as  a  home-staying  girl. 

He  declared  that  American  girls  were  only 
wasters  of  money,  who  would  lead  their  l)iisl)and3 
a  terrible  and  ruinous  dance.  They  bad  got  used 
in  America  to  all  sorts  of  things  and  were  not  con- 
tent to  live  in  an  ordinary  way  like  other  people. 

The  chief  marriage  trouble  in  Ireland,  how^.vev, 
is  not  that  so  many  people  marry  for  money ..ijt^ 
is  that  so  many  pe()[)le  do  not  marry  at  all,  Q¥. 
not  until  very  late.  The  labourer  marries  early, 
because  he  is  as  well  off  at  twenty  as  he  is 
likely  to  be  at  forty.  The  laljourer,  too,  is  free 
from  the  worries  of  match-making,  though  he 
has  usually  sufficient  self-interest  to  choose  for 
a  wife  a  woman  who  will  be  able  to  add  to  the 
income  of  the  house  at  times  of  turnip-thinning, 
hay-making,  and  the  corn  harvest.  The  most 
unhappily  placed  man  in  Ireland  as  regards 
marriao;e  is  the  eldest  son  on  a  small  farm.     The 


IMARJllAGES  AND  MATCH-MAKING  47 

other  SODS  adventure  fortli  to  America,  to  Eugland, 
anywhere  out  of  IreLind,  and  marry  when  and 
wliom  they  will.  The  eldest  son  remains  on  the 
farm  to  which  he  is  heir  and  which  cuts  him  off 
from  all  freedom  of  life  until  his  father  is  in  the 
grave.  The  farm  does  not  produce  sufficient 
wealth  for  two  generations  of  married  people, 
and  the  eldest  son,  being  usually  a  dutiful  person, 
waits  on  and  on,  obeying  his  parents,  and  filling 
the  position  of  a  farm-labourei',  without  the  ffirm- 
labourer's  hiie  or  his  fieedom  to  marry  and 
establish  a  new  home  in  the  world. 

This  tragedy  of  the  eldest  sou  is  common  in  all 
parts  and  provinces  of  Jreland.  It  is  as  common 
in  Protestant  as  in  Catholic  places.  It  is  as 
common  in  valleys  that  look  rich  and  prosperous 
as  it  is  on  hill-sides  that  are  stony  and  barren. 
As  a  c()ns('(juciice  of  this,  in  Ireland  the  eldest  son 
is  often  the  last  of  the  family  to  grow  up.  It 
does  not  seem  an  abuse  of  language  that  unmarried 
men  should  be  called  "boys"  and  unmarried 
women  "girls,"  no  matter  how  old  they  are,  as 
is  the  custom  through  the  country.  (As  an  in- 
stance of  this  custom,  I  have  heard  a  man  describ- 
ing how,  when  he  was  doing  some  work  near  a 
house,  a  girl  ran  out  and  interrupted  him — "  a 
middle-aged  girl  of  about  forty,"  he  said.)  The 
eldest  son  seems  to  me  to  be  frecpiently  a  middle- 
aged  boy.  Jlis  [)arents  treat  him  as  a  boy  no 
matter  what  his  age,  and,  as  often  as  not,  he 
remains  one  till  they  die. 


48         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

I  have  heard  that  among  the  very  poor  people 
the  okl  age  pensions  liave  made  a  difference  in 
the  position  of  the  eklest  son.  His  energies  are 
no  longer  altogether  occupied  in  making  ends  meet 
for  his  parents  and  himself  His  parents  with 
their  pensions  are  almost  self-supporting,  so  that 
he  is  free  to  go  out  and  look  for  a  wife  if  he 
wants  one.  According  to  report  he  has  already 
in  many  cases  done  so. 

Ireland  is  largely  a  country  of  late  marriages 

and  of  few  marriages.     Emigration    has  drained 

the  country  to  an  unnatural  degree  of  the  young 

men  and  women  of  the  marrying  age,  and  those 

who    remain    are,    as    I    have    shown,    frequently 

unable  to  marry  until  all  tiie  exuberance  of  life 

has  gone  out  of  them.      Ireland  stands  third  from 

^  tlie   bottom   in    a   list   of  thirty  countries,    whose 

\y^^  marriage-rates  have  been  compared  bythe  liegistraij:, 

j^rii<\'^'^      General   of  England.     During  a  recent  period  of 

"^   \^       ten  years,   Ireland   has  shown  an  annual  average 

of  only  ten  people  married  for  every  1000  of  the 

population.     Of   the    thirty    countries    compared, 

}^y> Servia    has    the    highest    rate — 19.5    per    1000: 

^wX^h^         England,  along  with  Wales,  is  twelfth  in  the  list 
"^^^  with  15.8;  France  sixteenth  with  15.1.      This  low 

Irish  marriage-rate  has,  it  is  only  right  to  say, 
been  rising  steadily  during  the  }»ast  twenty  years. 
The  average  birth-rate  in  Ireland  gives  as  serious 
cause  for  alarm — at  least,  for  desire  for  ckange — 
as  the  marriage-rate.  During  the  ten  j^ears, 
1894-1903,  it  reached  a  lower  average  than  any 


MARRIAGES  AND  MATCH -AJAKING  49 

of  the  thirty  countries  to  whicli  I  have  referred 
except  France.  The  low  French  birth-rate,  how- 
ever, is  due  to  the  infertility  of  marriages  ;  the  low 
Irish  rate  to  their  fewness. 

This  hist  hic.t  nMuiiids  us  that  thinujs  in  In^land 
nro  ]i()t  so  had  as  a  superficial  glance  at  the 
statistics  would  suggest.  It  has  been  pointed  out 
by  Mr  F.  F.  Montague  in  "  Lcabhar  ua  h-Jijireanu  " 
that,  while  the  birth-rate  per  head  of  the  popula- 
tion has  declined  rapidly  during  the  last  ten  years 
in  most  couu tries,  in  Ireland  during  the  same 
period  it  has  remained  stationary.  The  same 
writer  quotes  a  paper  read  before  the  London 
Statistical  Society  in  1906  to  show  that,  if  we 
consider  the  birth-rate,  not  with  reference  to  the 
whole  poj)ulation  of  the  country,  Init  witli  reference 
to  the  po])ulation  of  a  cliild-l)caring  age,  the 
position  of  li'cland  is  still  happier.  Ireland,  it 
is  proved,  is  inhabited  by  almost  the  most  fertile 
race  in  Europe,  and  "  Ireland  and  all  its  divisions 
alone  among  all  the  countries  for  which  figures 
could  1)0  obtMiined  show  an  increased  fertility." 
Protestant  Irehmd  and  Catholic  Ireland  share  this 
virtue  of  fertility  as  they  share  so  many  others. 

Until  the  last  paragraph  or  so,  we  have  been 
discussing  marriage  for  the  most  part  with  reference 
to  the  farming  classes.  Marriage,  it  may  be  said, 
is  a  sul)ject  of  perpetual  interest  and  speculation 
with  them.  If  old  country-women  meet  a  pleasant 
girl  on  the  road  and  get  into  talk  with  her,  it  is 
unlikely  they  will  proceed  on  their  journey  without 

D 


50         TTOIME  LIFE  IN  lEELAND 

havino-    mnde    a    few    humorous    ol)servations    on 

o 

husbauds  and  marriage.  Among  otlier  classes 
there  arc  few  marriafje  customs  whicli  differentiate 
Ireland  from  America  or  England.  The  gentry,  of 
course,  follow  the  English  fashion,  and  the  most 
notable  thinoj  about  the  town  artisan  is  that,  like 
the  artisan  elsewhere,  he  gets  married  by  preference 
on  a  holiday  like  Easter  JMonday  and  goes  off  with 
his  bride  for  a  day's  excursion. 

Among  the  working  classes  in  one  Ulster  town, 
according  to  an  exaggcrator,  it  is  the  way  of  the 
women  to  support  their  husbands,  lie  affirms 
that  it  is  the  ambition  of  unmarried  girls  in  the 
town  to  get  sulHcicntly  W(:ll-]>aid  work  to  be  able 
to  keep  a  liusband.  A  ty})ical  girl,  lie  declares, 
will  go  to  the  clergyman  and  give  him  notice  that 
she  is  going  to  marry,  say,  Jimmy  Brown.  The 
clergyman  warns  her  that  Jimmy  is  an  irregular, 
thriftless  character,  who  cannot  be  relied  on  to 
earn  a  steady  living.  "  And  what  does  that 
matter?"  cries  the  girl.  "  Amn't  I  as  well  able 
to  keep  a  man  as  Lizzie  M'Keown  that  was  married 
on  Joe  Harbison  last  week  ?  "  In  Ulster,  people — 
average  people — are  not  married  "to"  but  always 
"  on  "  each  other. 

The  young  Protestant  in  the  commorcial  and 
professional  classes  has  also  tlie  reputation  of  being 
something  of  a  materialist  in  his  love-making.  It 
is  said  that,  when  he  hears  of  a  girl  who  might 
suit  him  as  a  wife,  he  asks  three  ipiestions  : 
"What's    her  religion?     How   old   is  she?     Has 


>/<:  o^- 


MARRI  AGES  AND  MATCH-MAKING  51 

she  any  money  ?  "  Sometimes,  however,  he  falls  in 
love  before  he  knows  what  lie  is  doing  and  marries 
a  poor  girl,  or  even  a  middle-aged  one,  or,  more 
terrible  still,  a  Catholic. 

Mixed  ni.'iri'iagcs — marriages  between  Catholics  ^p^ 

iind  Protestants — -are,  as  1  show  elsewhere,  as 
frequent  as  is  wise,  though  usually,  so  far  as  I 
hrwe  scfiu,..Jliiiher  the  husband  or  the  wife  takes  ' 
the  "  mixed "  element  out  of  the  marriage  by 
Lecoming  converted  to  the  religion  of  the  other. 
Tlie  cK'rgy  of  all  tlie  cl)ui(!lies  ()|)pose  these 
marriages  tooth  nnd  nail.  The  Catholic  clergy  arc 
often  blamed  for  the  inlcusity  of  tlieir  oj)[)osition,  an 
opposition  which,  1  imagine,  has  become  more 
uncompromising  since  the  present  Pope  was  raised 
to  the  i^i|)al  Cliair.  Within  the  last  few  years,  a 
Cathobc,  whose  mai'i-iage  with  a  Piotestaut  girl  an 
Irish  Bishoj)  refused  to  sanction,  had  to  cross  over 
to  England  to  get  a  priest  of  his  own  church  to 
marry  him,  and  no  doubt  the  same  kind  of  thing 
had  frequently  happened.  Protestants  whom 
this  annoys  ought  in  fairness  to  consider  the 
attitude  of  their  own  clergy  in  regard  to  the 
question  of  mixed  marriages.  Some  years  ago 
I  remember  hearing  from  a  broad-minded  Presby- 
terian minister  how  he  himself  had  prevented  a 
mixed  marriage  in  the  south  of  Ireland.  A 
Presbyterian  soldier  in  a  Scottish  regiment,  which 
was  quai'tered  in  a  southern  town,  fell  in  love  \N'ith 
a  Catholic  girl,  and  again  and  again  besought  her 
to  marry    him.     The    girl    at    last  consented    ou 


52  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

condition  that  the  soldier  would  become  a  Catholic, 
and  the  soldier,  probably  not  caring  two  pins  for 
any  religion,  promised  to  do  so.  The  Presbyterian 
minister  heard  of  this  and  rushed  off  to  the  Colonel, 
urging  the  latter  to  save  the  man  from  so  fatal  a 
step.  As  a  result,  the  Colonel  immediately 
bundled  the  man  out  of  the  town  and  had  him 
transferred  to  another  regiment  beyond  the  circle 
of  temptation.  "J'he  minister  boasted  of  all  this  to 
me  as  though  he  had  performed  a  noble  work. 
Perhaps  he  had. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  here  to  remark  that 
love-making  is  a  good  deal  commoner  in  the  towns 
than  in  tlie  country,  and  in  Protestant  ])laces  than 
in  Catholic  places.  The  common  joke  among 
country  boys  in  Ulster — "Are  you  doin'  any 
coortin'  this  weather "  ? — springs  from  social 
conditions  in  which  the  sexes  meet  on  easy  and 
intimate  terms.  These  conditions  have  their  bad 
as  well  as  their  good  side.  Ulster  pays  for  its 
greater  sexual  freedom  by  a  n-e(|U(;ii(-y  of  illegili- 
mate  biitlis  unlcnown  in  the  other  provinces. 

An  illegitimate  birth,  of  course,  does  not  always 
imply  immorality  of  a  gross  sort,  and  the  people 
recofjnise  this  for  all  theii'  Puritanism.  1  liave 
known  more  than  one  admiral)le  woman  in  country 
places  whose  child  had  no  legal  father  and  whose 
neighbours  were  sulHcientl}'  human  in  their 
philosophy  to  treat  her  as  they  would  any  married 
woman.  Usually,  the  child  is  called  frankly  after 
its  father,  though  not  always.      Its  ros|)ectability 


MAIUUAGES  AND  JMATCH-MAKING  53 

is  even  measured  in  part  by  the  father's — or 
supposed  father's — position  in  life.  I  once  was 
startled  to  hear  a  very  religious  lady,  who  was 
praising  a  farm-labourer  say  :  "  And  indeed  it's 
no  wonder  he  is  a  decent  man,  for  tliey  say  liis 
father  was  a  Presbyterian  minister."  No  one  need 
construe  this  as  a  thrust  at  the  Presbyterian  clergy, 
who  are  as  clean-living  a  body  of  men  as  could  be 
found  in  any  country.  Even  among  them,  how- 
ever, a  rare  exception  will  be  found.  As  for  the 
laity,  there  are  a  suflicieut  number  of  exceptions 
among  them  to  make  "Holy  Willie's  Prayer"  a 
very  intelligible  poem  in  Ulster. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  think  the  Ulster  atmosphere 
is  sufficiently  clean  if  you  contrast  it  with  that  of 
the  majority  of  civilised  countries.  But  the 
sensualist  disguised  as  a  lover  is  unquestionably 
one  of  the  persons  of  the  play.  The  clergy  and  the 
parents  make  no  attempt  to  teach  sexual  common- 
sense  to  the  young.  Among  the  middle  classes 
in  Belfast,  liuudreds  of  youths  fling  their  arms 
round  girls  with  an  undesirable  promiscuity,  and, 
indeed,  consider  the  girls  rather  dull — "  chil- 
blains "  is  an  expressive  word  I  have  heard  them 
described  by — if  they  object  to  the  business.  The 
curious  thing  is  that  practically  all  this  amorousness 
which  goes  on  within  the  middle  classes  them- 
selves is  quite  moral  from  a  conventional  point 
of  view.  It  is  none  the  less  demoralisinnf  on  this 
account,  for,  where  it  exists,  there  can  of  course 
be  no  intelligent    friendship    between    the    sexes. 


54  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

The  young  male  amorists,  too,  frequently  end  by 
going  forth  on  adventures  among  women  outside 
their  own  class. 

I  think,  nevertheless,  there  is  a  good  deal  of 
respect  shown  to  women  in  Ireland.  A  youth  does 
not  take  a  girl  into  public-houses  for  drink  in  any 
part  of  Ireland  as  you  will  see  youths  doing  in 
London  and  in  Mancliester.  Neither  will  you  see 
him  cndn-acing  her  on  tram-cars,  and  in  all  surts  of 
public  places,  with  the  frequency  which  is  so  odd  a 
feature  of  the  social  phantasmagoria  in  cities  like 
London.  In  London  these  pul)lic  cml)races  seem 
to  pass  without  notice,  hi  Hclfjist,  in  the  day- 
liglit  hours,  hugging  couples  would,  !  am  afraid, 
l)e  figures  of  satire  for  small  boys. 

I  am  getting  away  from  thesultjeet  of  marriages 
and  matchmaking,  however.  Before  closing  the 
chapter,  let  me  return  to  the  point,  if  only  to 
mention  one  curious  custom  connected  with 
marriages.  It  is  considered  the  right  thing  in 
some  parts  of  Ireland,  if  you  are  going  along  ihe 
road  with  a  gun  and  meet  a  newly  married  couple 
driving  on  a  car,  to  fire  a  shot  into  the  air  in 
their  honour.  I  have  seen  a  man  suddenly  catch 
up  his  gun,  in  a  public-house,  where  he  was  hav- 
ing a  drink,  and  rush  out  into  tlie  road  to  lire  a 
shot  skywards  with  every  sign  of  enthusiasm  when 
a  bridal  couple  had  driven  by. 

The  excitements  of  wedding-days  have  lessened 
during  the  last  century,  for  a  hundred  years  ago — 
even,  I  have  heard,  a  generation  ago — there  were 


JMARllI AGES  AND  MATCH-MAKING  55 

stiJl  traces  of  something  that  looked  like  the  cus- 
tom of  marriage  by  capture  in  many  country 
places.  Something  more  than  traces,  indeed,  if 
half  tlie  stories  al)out  cigliteenth  century  abduc- 
tioiiH  (',;ui  be.  bcbevod,  I  do  not  know  whether 
the  abduction  habit  liad  its  origin  in  tlie  (jiaelic 
parts  of  Irehind,  or  among  the  invaders  from 
England.  Whichever  may  be  the  case,  there  is 
no  doubt  tliat  young  men  in  those  days  often 
sought,  girls  who  liad  fortunes  by  force  where  tlicy 
now  seek  them  by  peaceable  persuasion.  In  1G34 
the  Irish  Parliament  had  to  pass  a  measure  for 
punishing  thosa-who  "carried  away  maydens  that 
be  inlieritorSj''  and  a  century  later  abduction  was 
made  a  capital  otience.  It  was  easy  to  break 
through  the  spirit  of  the  law,  liowever,  for  if  the 
girl  was  ])la,('ed  in  front  of  tiie  man  on  tlie  horse 
on  which  lie  carried  her  oil",  she,  and  not  he,  was 
technically  responsible  for  the  abduction. 

The  excitements  of  eighteenth  century  Ireland, 
it  must  be  remembered,  were  the  excitements  of  an 
a1)norinal  country  out  of  which  many  of  the  finest 
elenients  had  be(!n  driven  by  persecution  and  war. 

I  a.m  assured  by  a.  friend  that  traces  of  marriage 
by  ca[)ture  were  still  to  be  found  in  some  })arts  of 
Cavan  till  fairly  recent  years,  and  that  it  was  not  an 
unknown  thing  for  the  bridegroom  to  ride  up  chal- 
lengingly  on  horseback  to  the  bride's  house,  and  for 
the  bride  to  climb  out  to  him  through  the  window. 
This  was  but  a  tradition  and  a  ritual,  the  meaning 
of  which  had  probably  been  long  forgotten. 


CHAPTER  IV 

STORIES     AND     SUPERSTITIONS     (OR    WHATEVER     YOU 
LIKE    TO    CALL    THEm) 

It  is  a  common  opinion  that  the  Irish  are  very 
superstitious,  and,  reading  some  books,  you  would 
imagine  tliat  a  great  number  of  Irish  men  and 
women  passed  their  spare  time  in  trances  on  the 
liill-sides,  heai'iug  the  music  and  l)eli(>hling  the 
goings-lbrth  of  the  fairy  hosts.  Ireland,  however, 
is  by  no  means  a  country  of  visionaries,  1  tliiuk 
that  for  every  visionary  you  meet  with,  you  will 
discover  ten  or  even  twenty  people  who  occupy 
their  idleness  with  jTcandjlin"-  on  tlie  Enoli.sh  iiorse- 
races.  Still,  there  is  no  doubt  tliat  the  old  people 
— especially  in  the  least  Anglicised  })arts — liave 
plenty  of  strange  and  incredible  stories  to  tell, 
though  the  grown-up  boys  and  girls  smile  across 
the  fire  at  them  with  materialistic  wisdom. 

There  are  few  parts  of  the  country  where  you 
will  not  meet  with  some  belief  in  witch-craft. 
Especially  common  is  the  belief  in  that  form  of 
witch-craft  by  means  of  which  the  JRitter  is 
taken  from  your  cows  to  enrich  a  wicked  neigh- 
bour's churn.  I  have  heard  it  said  that  old  women 
are  still  to  be  found  here  and  there  in  the  lields 


STORIES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     57 

oil  May  Eve,  gathcriug  lierbs  over  which  to 
murmur  their  butter-stealing  spells.  Usually, 
however,  these  moony  ceremonies  do  not  seem  to 
be  a  necessary  [)art  (^f  the  bewitchment.  "  A  very 
small  (lr()[)  of  milk  laken  from  tlie  cow  is  CTiough 
to  work  tlie  charm,"  is  the  account  a  girl  from 
the  midlands  gives  of  the  business.  It  seems  to 
be  with  the  idea  of  preventing  the  milk  in  its 
pure  state  from  falling  into  doubtful  hands  that 
a  farmer's  wife  in  Meath,  of  wliom  I  have  heard, 
never  sends  a  present  of  milk  to  a  poor  ncigld)our 
without  first  putting  a  pinch  of  salt  in  it.  "  It 
is  not  right,"  as  the  girl  from  whom  I  had  the 
story  said,  "  to  let  milk  out  into  the  wind  without 
putting  salt  into  it."  The  same  girl  told  me  a 
curious  sl,ory  of  l)iitter-stca,ling  in  her  nciglibour- 
liood.  There  was  a  woman,  siic  said,  living  not 
far  from  her  father's,  who  was  noticed  getting  a 
powerful  lot  of  butter  off  her  few  cows.  One 
day  her  motiier  determined  to  get  to  the  heart 
of  the  mystery,  and  went  to  the  woman's  house. 
She  said  when  she  came  home  tliat  she  had  found 
the  woman  standing  on  a  creei)io  stool  witli  her 
head  down  into  tlie  churn  and  lier  rosary  in  her 
hand.  "  It  was  praying  she  was,"  she  declared, 
"  but  maybe  to  the  devil."  The  girl's  mother  cer- 
tainly was  inclined  to  believe  that  something 
dishonest  was  afoot,  for  she  herself  had  been 
brought  uj)  in  a  home  wlierc  there  was  a  charm 
nailed  to  tlie  bottom  of  the  big  churn  to  protect 
the  butter. 


58  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

I  have  heard  many  simihir  stories  of  stolen 
butter  in  County  Mayo.  One  of  them  tokl  of 
an  old  woman,  with  one  lean  cow,  who  always 
managed  to  have  two  crocks  full  of  hutter  to 
take  with  her  to  market — much  more  than  she 
could  ever  have  come  by  honestly.  She  was 
going  to  market  one  day,  with  her  ass  carrying 
the  two  crocks,  when,  just  as  tliey  were  crossing 
a  bridge,  something  broke,  and  the  crocks  of  butter 
fell  out  into  the  road  and  were  smashed.  Well, 
would  you  believe  it,  whatever  was  the  matter 
with  the  luitter,  no  dog  or  bird  or  beast  would 
touch  or  taste  it,  l)ut  it  lay  thci-e  on  the  I'oad 
rotting  till  tlie  sun  had  nuilti'd  it  and  I  he  horsiis 
and  cattle  had  trodden  it  away.  It  was  some- 
thing more  than  butter  that  was  in  it,  my  in- 
formant concluded. 

If  stories  like  these  were  oidy  told  as  anecdotes 
to  make  a  fireside  interesting,  they  would  have 
comparatively  little  value  as  revelations  of  the 
mind  of  a  people;  but  they  are  nearly  always 
related  as  a  part  of  the  history  of  the  story-teller's 
neighbourhood  and  even  of  his  family.  Usually 
they  deal  with  matters  that  have  come  within 
his  own  experience — real  or  imagined.  When 
they  go  back  as  far  as  the  days  of  his  grandfathers 
and  greatgrand lathers,  they  havt;  a  way  of  being 
more  artistically  shaped  and  more  dclinite  in 
detail.  One  does  not  often  hear  as  full  a  story 
concerning  contemporary  or  recent  events  as  the 
story  of  the  scholar  and  the  three  black  bottles, 


STOIMES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     59 

wliich  1  heard  as  an  old  true  story  during  my 
last  holiday.  It  related  to  the  time  when  the 
poor  scholars  used  to  be  going  about  the  country 
— the  ])oor  scholars  who,  as  every  one  knows, 
had  knowledge  more  than  common  men.  A 
learned  man  of  them  arrived  one  night  in  a  farm- 
house, where,  churn  as  they  might,  they  had  been 
getting  hardly  any  butter  from  the  milk.  "  Put 
a  pot  on  the  fire,"  he  said  to  the  farmer's  wife, 
when  he  heard  the  story,  "  and  boil  some  milk  in 
it,  and  I'll  find  out  wlio  it  is  that's  stealing  your 
butter."  lie  got  a  large  black  bottle  from  the 
farmer's  wife,  and,  when  he  had  sealed  and  corked 
it,  he  put  it  into  the  pot  where  the  milk  was 
boiling,  saying  a  number  of  words  that  you 
couMn'L  uiideistiMid  wliih^  he  did  so.  After  a 
while,  the  bottle  cracked,  and  with  that  tliere 
was  a  sound  like  a  cry  far  away  from  the  hous(!. 
"  Listen  to  that,"  said  the  scholar.  "  I'll  put  in 
another  bottle  and  you  will  hear  something  more." 
He  closed  up  a  second  black  bottle,  and  put 
it  into  tlie  j)ot,  saying  more  words  over  it.  AVhen 
iu  due  course  this  gave  a  crack,  there  was  a  shriek, 
as  of  a  w^oman  in  great  pain,  much  nearer  the 
house  than  the  first  cry.  "Do  you  hear  that?" 
said  the  scholar,  becoming  interested  iu  his  w^ork. 
"  It  isn't  long  till  she'll  be  here  now  and  she 
yelling  in  her  pain.  So  bolt  the  door  and  don't 
let  her  in  till  I  tell  you."  With  that  he  took  a 
third  bottle,  and  saw  that  the  cork  was  in  it,  and 
was  just  going  to  put  it  in  the  pot,  when  there 


60  HOISIE  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

came  a  loud  bangiiig  and  shrieking  at  tlie  door. 
*'  Let  me  in,  let  me  in  ! "  cried  a  voice  I'rom  the 
outside,  whining  and  supplicating.  "Oh,  you're 
killing  me,  you're  killing  me.  If  anything  else 
cracks  in  me,  I'll  surely  die."  The  man  at  the 
fire  told  them  to  wait,  however,  and  to  make 
her  confess  that  she  had  stolen  the  butter,  and 
promise  never  to  do  it  again,  while  all  the  time 
the  groaning  and  moaning  went  on  as  if  she  were 
in  fearful  torment.  As  he  put  the  third  bottle 
into  the  boiling  milk,  she  let  a  shriek  out  of  her 
and  confessed,  so  he  took  tlie  bottle  out  again, 
and  told  tliem  to  let  her  in.  Tliey  let  her  in, 
and  saw  that  it  was  an  old  woman  from  near  the 
])hice.  She  confessed  everything,  and  promisevl 
to  give  up  the  butter,  so  they  let  her  oil".  After 
that,  they  were  never  troubled  with  scarcity  of 
butter  again. 

Mr  W.  B.  Yeats,  whose  "Celtic  Twilight" 
shouhl  be  read  by  all  wlio  are  interested  in  Irish 
beliefs  and  visions,  tells  us  in  his  collection  of 
"  Irish  Fairy  and  Folk  Tales,"  that,  when  the 
butter  has  been  bewitched  as  in  the  story  of  the 
three  black  bottles,  "  sometimes  the  coulter  of 
a  plough  will  be  heated  red-hot,  and  the  witch 
will  rush  in,  crying  out  that  she  is  ])uriung.  A 
new  horse-shoe  or  donkey-shoe,  heated  and  put 
under  the  churn,  with  three  straws,  if  possible, 
stolen  at  midnight  from  over  the  witch's  door, 
is  quite  infallible."  I  do  not  wish  in  the  present 
book,    however,    to    quote    passages    from    books 


A    C;.\i;i.lC   STOKV-TF.r.T.KR. 
Wiidiiii  Coik-IIo.  of  the  ClaMhvJji.  u'lio  u\m  a  f^iU  at  a  iwciil  OiiwiJilas  fo,    her  stoiy-fclliii^.) 


STORIES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     61 

which  everybody  oiiglit  to  have  read  for  them- 
selves, l)ut  rather  to  give  a  sense  of  what  I  have 
seen  with  my  own  eyes,  and  heard  with  my  own 
ears,  in  Irehind  or  in  the  company  of  Irish  people. 
Consequently,  1  will  oidy  mention  here  those 
beliefs  which  I  know  to  be  in  existence,  because 
I  have  met  and  spoken  to  the  people  who  believed 
in  them. 

Very  intimately  connected  with  the  belief  in 
the  sto.'ilini;-  of  1)utter  by  witchcraft  is  the  ])e]ief  in 
the  evil  ey(!  or  something  like  it.  I'his  belief  may 
be  expi'CvSsed  in  the  words  of  a  Meatli  girl,  who  de- 
clared that  "  any  one  that  has  a  grudging  eye,  to 
cast  it  on  a  live  thing  would  make  it  decay  away 
if  it  was  not  given  to  them."  One  of  the  tradi- 
tional charms  to  j^rotect  cattle  from  being  bewitched 
or  "  grudged  "  she  described  as  follows.  Get  a  bit 
of  string,  and  put  a  certain  numl)er  of  knots  on  it, 
saying  a  prayer  over  each  knot.  The  string  should 
then  be  tied  to  the  animal's  tail  in  case  any  one 
had  overlooked  or  grudged  it.  Another  charm, 
"  when  a  nice  beast  has  been  grudged,"  is  to  get  a 
bit  of  the  ij;rudij[er's  coat  and  burn  it  under  the 
beast's  nose. 

It  is  not  only  from  witches  with  the  gift  for  steal- 
ing butter — tliere  are  some  delightful  stories,  by  the 
way,  of  witches  who  transform  themselves  into 
hares,  and  milk  their  luugldjours' cows  in  tliis  guise 
— and  from  ])eo])le  with  malice  in  their  eyes  that 
the  imaginative  peasant  aj)prchends  danger.  There 
is  still  plenty  of  belief  in  fairies  in  the  country — 


62         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

thougli  it  is  not  nearly  so  common,  T  think,  as  tlie 
belief  in  witchcraft — and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
fairies  are  known  as  "  good  people,"  sensitive 
parents  none  the  less  object  to  having  their  ciiildren 
cai-ried  off  by  them.  A  iMayo  man  lately  told  me 
how,  when  he  was  a  child,  he  was  never  sent  out 
of  the  house  on  a  message  down  the  road  without 
someone  putting  a  coal  or  something  of  the;  sort  in 
his  pocket  to  })rotect  liim  from  unseen  harm. 
There  is  no  need,  on  the  other  hand,  to  suppose 
that  it  is  necessarily  a  tragic  fate  for  a  chikl  to  be 
taken  off  by  the  fairies.  A  good  many  years  ago, 
there  was  a  lame  boy  in  Mulranny  on  the  coast  of 
JMayo  who  used  to  1)0  sent  out  to  mind  tlie  cattle. 
One  time  he  disap[)eared  for  two  days,  and,  when 
he  came  home,  he  said  that  he  had  Ijeen  with  the 
fairies.  As  a  proof  that  something  supernatural 
had  happened  to  him,  he  went  out  where  there  was 
only  grass  then,  but  where  tliere  are  houses,  and  a 
hotel,  and  a  railway  station  now,  and  he  ]tro[)hesied 
that  a  big  house  would  be  built  here,  and  anotlier 
house  tliei-e,  and  something  corresponding  to  a  rail- 
way station  in  yet  a  tiiird  place,  lie  pointed  out  the 
exact  spots  where  all  the  new  buildings  in  Mulranny 
stand  to-day,  and  not  only  this  but  he  traced  the 
line  of  all  the  foundations.  This,  it  must  be  re- 
membered, was  in  days  long  l)eibre  any  one 
expected  the  great  hotel  to  be  built,  and  hefore 
there  was  any  thought  of  railways  in  those  parts. 
I  heard  the  story  as  a  true  one  from  a  man  who 
himself  was  brought  up  in  Mulranny. 


STORIES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     63 

I  heard  anotlier  story  from  him  of  a  young 
woman  who  was  stok^i  hy  the  fairies  in  the  same 
county — a  story  that,  no  doubt,  has  its  parallels  in 
other  districts,  for  I  seem  to  have  heard  something 
like  it  1)0 fore.  Tlicrc  was  once  a  younijf  fnrmcr, 
he  said,  who  lived  in  such-and-such  a  place,  and 
who  did  not  believe  in  the  fairies,  so  that  he  would 
walk  past  a  certain  fairy  rath  on  any  night  of  the 
year  without  caring.  One  night  he  was  going 
along  the  road,  and  liad  got  past  the  rath  when 
he  saw  a  curious  sight  coming  towards  him.  This 
was  a  coffin  being  carried  by  three  tall,  dark  men, 
with  no  one  in  the  place  where  the  fourth  man 
should  have  been.  The  young  farmer  thought  this 
was  queer.  However,  out  of  respect  to  the  dead, 
he  offered  to  help  the  bearers  of  the  coffin,  and 
went  over  and  put  his  shoulder  in  the  foujih  })]iice. 
The  bearers  walked  forward  in  silence,  but  they 
had  not  gone  far  when  one  of  the  three  said  that 
it  was  time  they  had  a  rest.  AVith  that  they  laid 
the  coffin  down  on  the  road.  The  young  farmer 
may  have  looked  away  for  a  minute,  or  sometliiug 
of  the  sort.  Anyway,  he  suddeidy  woke  u])  to 
the  fact  that  tlic  three  others  had  disappeared,  and 
tJKit  he  was  alone  with  the  coffin  lying  at  his  feet 
on  the  road. 

After  a  while,  when  the  others  showed  no  signs 
of  coming  back,  something  impelled  him  to  look 
inside  the  coffin,  and  there  he  saw  a  beautiful, 
fair-haired  young  woman,  dressed  not  like  a  corpse 
at  all,  but  in  her  ordinary  clothes.     She  opened 


64         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

her  eyes  wliile  the  young  man  was  looking  inside, 
and  after  a  minute  she  sat  up  in  tlie  cotlin,  and  he, 
l)eing  quite  fearless,  helped  her  to  stand  up  and 
to  come  out  on  to  the  road.  I  le  asked  her  how 
she  came  to  be  there,  but  in  answer  to  all  his 
questions  she  only  shook  her  head,  so  that  he 
thought  she  must  be  dumb,  and,  not  knowing  what 
to  do  with  her,  took  her  along  with  him  to  his 
house.  Well,  she  lived  tliere  for  a  good  many 
years,  looking  after  the  house  and  keeping  every- 
thing in  beautiful  order,  but  never  opening  her 
mouth  to  speak. 

Amon<>'  other  thino-s,  she  knitted  him  a  lono;- 
sl('.(!V(;d  vest  oi'  waistcoat,  (»f  which  he  was  wry 
proud.  He  was  W(;aring  this  at  a  fail'  twenty  or 
thirty  mik'S  away  from  his  home  one  chiy,  when  he 
saw  two  men,  an  elderly  man  and  a  young  one, 
looking  at  him  very  hard.  First  they  looked  at 
liis  waistcoat,  and  then  they  looked  at  liim,  and  in 
the  end  they  (;ame  u])  and  asked  liim  where  lie 
had  got  the  vest.  He  asked  them  what  they 
wanted  to  know  for,  and  they  told  him  that  there 
was  some  kind  of  a  stitch  or  pattern  in  it  which 
they  recognised,  and  that  they  only  knew  one  person 
who  could  do  that  kind  of  work,  and  that  they  had 
lost  her  some  years  ago.  The  young  niuii  became 
interested  in  what  he  heard,  and,  thinking  that 
this  mioiit  be  the  father  and  brother  of  the  siirl  in 
his  house,  lie  told  them  the  story  of  the  cofhn  anil 
tlie  three  tall  dark  men,  and  askiid  them  to  go 
home  with  him  and  see  the  girl,      'riiey  went,  and. 


STOIMES  AND  SUPEltSTITIONS     05 

sure  eiiongli,  it  was  the  old  man's  daughter.  They 
were  iu  great  delight  at  first,  but,  wheu  they 
found  that  none  of  them  could  get  the  girl  to  speak 
a  word,  they  hecanic  as  moui'iiful  as  they  had  pi'C- 
viously  ]»een  ha[)])y.  The  girl  then  went  off  with 
the  two  strangers,  and  the  young  farmer  promised 
to  go  and  see  her  soon.  Some  nights  after  this,  he 
was  walking  down  past  the  fairy  rath  again  when 
he  heard  voices  near  him.  He  stopped  to  listen 
and  discovered  that,  whoever  the  speakers  were, 
they  were  talking  about  the  young  girl,  and 
grumbling  about  how  they  had  been  prevented 
from  carrying  her  off  on  that  first  night.  "  Well," 
said  one  of  them  with  satisfaction,  "  he  has  never 
been  able  to  make  her  talk  any  way."  "  No,"  said 
another  with  a  malicious  chuckle,  "  and  never 
will.  It's  not  likely  he'll  ever  notice  that  silver 
pin  behind  her  car,  and  pull  it  out  so  that  she'll 
get  back  her  speech." 

On  hearing  this,  the  young  man  hurried  off  as 
fast  as  he  could  without  being  perceived,  and  on 
the  next  morning  at  break  of  day  he  rode  off  to 
the  distant  farm  iu  which  the  girl's  family  lived. 
He  found  the  girl  sitting  over  the  kitchen  fire, 
and  going  up  behind  her,  he  saw  the  silver  pin  at 
the  back  of  her  ear  just  as  he  expected.  He  pulled 
this  out,  and  no  sooner  had  he  done  so  than  she 
got  back  her  power  of  speech,  and  sat  up  and 
began  talking  to  him.  After  that,  her  father 
and  brother  came  in,  and  everybody  was  so 
happy    that  a   match    was  immediately  made    of 

£ 


66  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

it  between  the  girl  and  the  young  farmer.     It  is  to 
be  presumed  that  they  lived  happily  ever  afterwards. 

Of  course,  tlie  fairy  whose  credit  is  most  generally 
and  firmly  estaljlished  in  Ireland  is  not  the  fairy 
who  steals  children  or  beautiful  young  women, 
sometimes  leaving  a  changeling  in  their  place, 
but  the  Banshee — the  fairy-woman  whose  cry  is 
a  portent  of  coming  death.  You  will  not  have 
to  go  into  the  Irish-speaking  districts,  or  even 
into  the  Catholic  districts,  to  find  people  who 
believe  in  the  Banshee.  You  will  meet  Protestants 
in  County  Antrim  who  believe  that  there  is  a 
Banshee  in  th(;ir  family,  ;iiid  who  say  that  tluiy 
have  heard  ils  terrible  ciy.  Occasionally,  loo, 
one  meets  amono-  the  Ulster  ih'otestants  with  the 
belief  in  witches,  but  the  last  County  Antrim 
girl  who  said  to  me  that  she  knew  a  witch 
added  significantly  that  the  witch  was  a  "  Boman 
Catholic." 

To  return  to  the  Banshee,  I  have  never  myself 
met  any  one  who  had  seen  her  in  human  shape, 
but  that  she  has  a  human  and  alterable  form  many 
of  the  legends  attest.  "  Sometimes,"  declares  Lady 
Wilde  in  "  Ancient  Legends  of  Ireland,"  "  the 
Banshee  assumes  the  form  of  some  sweet-singing 
virgin  of  the  family  who  died  young,  and  has 
been  given  the  mission  by  the  invisible  powers 
to  become  the  harbinger  of  coming  doom  to  her 
mortal  kindred.  Or  she  may  be  seen  at  night  as 
a  shrouded  woman,  crouched  beneath  the  trees, 
lamenting  with  veiled  face  ;  or  flying  past  in  the 


SrORIES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     C,7 

moojiliglit,  crying  bitterly."  Anotlicr  portent  of 
death,  comparable  to  the  Banshee,  is  the  Coiste 
Boclliar — the  Death  (or,  rather.  Deaf)  Coach — 
which,  according  to  some,  is  a  kind  of  licarse 
drawn  by  headless  horses.  I  know  a  man  of  line 
intellect  from  Connemara  who  declares  that  he 
has  seen  the  phantom.  He  says  that  he  was 
driving  out  one  day  with  some  other  people 
when  tliey  saw  the  silent  shadow  of  a  hearse 
di'awn  l)y  foui'  hoi'ses  [Kissing  along  tlie  side  of 
tlie  road.  Tlieic  was  no  hearse  in  reality  to  cast 
this  sliadow. 

Besides  the  Banshee  and  tlie  Soundless  Coach, 
there  are  numerous  other  evil  portents  in  Ireland. 
Here  as  elsewhere  it  is  bad  luck  to  have  a  hare 
rumiing  across  your  path.  Here  as  elsewhere  you 
will  find  the  rhyme  a,I)out  mag[)ics  : 

One  for  sorrow, 
Tavo  for  joy, 
Three  for  a  marriage, 
Four  for  a  boy, 

or  one  of  its  variants.  It  is  unlucky  to  kill 
robins,  for  they  got  their  red  breasts  at  the  cross 
of  Christ.  It  is  unlucky  to  meet  a  priest  or  a  red- 
haired  person  when  one  is  setting  out  on  a  journey. 
"  God  forgive  you,  father,  you've  spoilt  my  day 
on  me,"  said  a  holiday-making  girl  the  other  day 
to  a  priest  she  met  on  tlie  road.  **  God  forgive 
you,  Bridget,  for  your  foolish  superstition,"  replied 
the  priest.  All  the  same,  as  her  friend  told  me,  the 
girl   did  not  meet  the  l)oy  she  went  out  in  the 


68         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

hope  of  seeing  that  day.  It  is  unhicky  to  meet 
funerals  and  not  to  turn  with  them,  and  I 
remember  a  medical  student  who  was  at  college 
with  me  saying  that  funerals  always  brought  him 
luck.  Once,  on  one  of  the  few  occasions  that  I 
was  ingenuous  enough  to  put  money  on  a  horse, 
he  and  I  had  just  been  sending  a  postal  order 
from  the  country  town  where  we  were  staying  to 
a  Belfast  book-maker  when  a  funeral  came  up  the 
road.  My  friend  insisted — half  laughing  at  his 
superstition — that  we  should  go  along  with  it, 
and  we  even  accompanied  it  into  the  graveyard, 
where  a  Methodist  minister  delivered  an  address, 
holding  up  the  conduct  of  the  dead  young  man 
as  an  example  for  the  bystanders  to  follow.  I 
am  curiously  puzzled  by  myself  when  I  look 
back  on  it,  and  wonder  what  the  minister  would 
have  thought  if  he  could  have  seen  behind 
our  serious  eyes  to  tlie  thoughts  that  wei'c  con- 
cerned, not  witli  death  and  l)eauty  of  conduct, 
but  with  the  fortunes  of  an  English  horse-race. 
The  horse  we  backed  did  not  win,  I  may  add, 
and,  having  lost  five  shillings  out  of  an  already 
empty  pocket,  I  no  longer  believed  in  the  super- 
stition al)out  funerals. 

The  superstition  that  it  is  uiducky  to  let  a  red- 
haired  person  into  the  house  the  lirst  thing  in  the 
New  Year  is,  of  course,  not  confined  to  Ireland. 
In  many  places,  too,  outside  Ireland  ill  luck  is 
supposed  to  be  foretold  by  a  crowing  hen  or  a 
cock  crowing  at  irregular  times.     On  one  occasion 


STORIES  AND  SUrEUSTlTlONS     G9 

a  farmer's  daughter  told  me  how,  when  her  uncle 
lay  ill  of  blood-poisoning,  "  two  hens  came  up 
to  the  door,  where  they  do  be  strolling  about, 
and  one  of  them  clapped  her  wings  and 
crowed  loudly."  Said  she  to  the  serving  boy, 
"  What  the  deuce  is  the  matter  with  the  hen  ?  " 
"  I'm  damned  if  I  know,"  he  replied.  "  With 
that,"  continued  the  girl  who  told  the  story,  "  T 
gave  her  a  clatter  with  a  stick  and  killed  her — she 
was  an  awful  old  lien.  Thou  the  other,  a  young 
one,  came  up  to  the  door  and  crowed  iind  (•lap[)cd 
her  wings,  and  I  threw  the  stick  at  her  and  lamed 
her.  She  had  to  be  killed,  and  we  made  soup 
out  of  her.  When  my  aunt  came  down  the  stairs 
she  asked  what  had  liaj)pencd  to  the  two  hens, 
but  1  didn't  like  to  frigliten  licr  by  telling  her 
what  the  lien  had  done.  And  my  uncle  died  the 
third  day  after  that." 

There  are,  as  might  be  expected,  a  good  many 
families  in  Ireland  in  which  the  death  of  one  of 
the  members  is  often  preceded  by  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  rooks  from  the  trees  round 
the  house,  and  ominous  dreams  are  as  common 
in  Ireland  as  in  most  places.  I  knew  one  very 
beautiful  and  clever  old  Presbyterian  lady  who 
usually  dreamt  that  she  had  lost  one  of  her  teeth 
a  short  time  before  the  death  of  any  of  her  near 
relations.  She  seemed  to  have  other  gifts  of 
prophecy,  too,  for  she  told  me  how  she  had  seen  her 
husband's  face  in  a  dream  three  times  before  ever 
she  set  eyes  on  him  in  real  life. 


70         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

Besides  the  beliefs  in  omens,  witclies,  fairies 
and  ghosts — beliefs  which  exist  in  a  hundred  other 
forms  than  those  I  have  mentioned — the  country  is 
full  of  strano;e  stories  about  human  beinirs  who  can 
chanoe  themselves  into  animals,  and  of  animals 
who  have  lived  for  a  time  as  human  beings.  I 
have  already  told  how  old  women  who  bewitch 
butter  are  sometimes  supposed  to  turn  tiiemselves 
into  hares,  this  being  a  more  convenient  shape  for 
the  purpose  of  committing  their  thefts  of  the 
necessary  drops  of  millc. 

in  County  Mayo  j^eople  will  tell  you  that  you 
must  never  say  "Glirrie" — this  is  a  semi-phonetic 
spelling  of  the  Irish  word  fjirrj'hiad/i,  "a  hare" — 
to  a  M/Oann,  'J'liis  is  because  one  of  the  JM'Oann 
women  of  those  parts  was  in  a  former  age  suspected 
of  being  a  witch,  and  because  a  farmer  whom  she 
was  injuring  discovered  her  in  her  witchery.  See- 
ing that  his  cows  were  ceasing  to  yield  any  l)utter 
in  their  milk,  he  began  to  spy  on  them  in  the 
field,  and,  one  day,  ;is  lie  was  looking  llirongh  a 
space  in  the  wall,  he  saw  a  hare  busy  taking 
the  milk  from  them.  Tie  didn't  let  a  sign  or 
sound  out  of  him  then,  but  the  next  time  he  came 
he  brought  the  greyhounds  with  him.  Well,  the 
hare  turned  up  again  and  began  milking  one  of 
the  cows,  and,  when  she  was  in  the  middle  of  her 
work,  he  set  the  dogs  at  her.  Off  she  ran,  and  the 
dogs  after  her,  over  wall  and  field,  and  wall  and 
field,  till  she  came  near  Girrie  M'Cann's  cottage. 
The    dogs    were    nearly    touching    her   when    she 


STORIES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     71 

reached  it,  and  she  made  a  wild  leap  for  the  window 
of  the  cottage  as  if  it  was  her  last  chance  of  safety. 
Just  as  she  was  jumping,  one  of  the  dogs  caught 
her  scut  in  his  mouth,  though  the  window  was  too 
small  for  him  to  follow  her.  The  farmer  on 
coming  up  saw  the  dog  standing  there  with  the 
hare's  scut  in  his  mouth,  and  signs  of  blood  on  it 
where  it  had  been  bitten  off.  He  went  into  the 
house  to  sec  if  the  hare  was  there,  but  he  only 
fouiitl  old  Mrs  M'Cann  lying  in  the  bed,  groaning, 
and  with  m;irks  of  blood  on  the  floor  and  tlie  1)0(1- 
clothes.  She  denied  that  any  haie  had  come  in 
tlirough  tli(!  window,  .-uid  the  farmer  looked  at 
her,  and  knew  that  she  herself  was  the  hare. 
After  that,  lie  told  the  neighbours  what  he  had 
seen,  and  from  that  day  slic  was  always  known  as 
"Girrie"  iM'Cann.  "And  that's  why,"  wound  up 
the  man  who  told  me  the  story,  "  the  J\i/Canns 
get  angry  if  you  say  '  Girrie'  to  one  of  them." 

The  O'Tooles  of  Clare  Island  are  said  to  become 
angry  in  a  similar  way  if  seals  are  mentioned  in 
their  presence.  There  is  every  reason  why  they 
should,  if  tlie  story  one  hears  about  tlieii-  ancestry 
is  to  l)c  believed.  In  the  beginning  of  the  genera- 
tions of  the  O'Tooles,  we  arc  told,  a  man  of  the 
family  was  wandering  one  day  towards  the  edge 
of  the  island,  which  lies  amid  the  coloured  and 
wonderful  ti<lcs  of  Clew  Bay.  In  the  water  by  the 
shore  he  espied  throe  seals  swimming  about,  and 
something  gave  him  the  idea  that  they  were  not 
ordinary  seals.     He  had  not  been  watching  long, 


72         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

when,  sure  enough,  the  three  seals  came  suddenly 
up  to  the  land,  stepped  out  of  their  skins,  and 
began  dancing  and  running  along  the  shore  in  the 
appearance  of  three  beautiful  young  women.  The 
man  of  the  O'Tooles  watched  them  for  some  time 
in  amazement,  but  it  did  not  take  him  lono-  to 
recover  his  wits  and  decide  upon  a  plan  for  captur- 
ing one  of  them.  lie  crept  down  towards  where 
the  skins  were  lying,  hiding  himself  IVum  time 
to  time  l)ehinel  a  big  stone  so  that  he  should  not 
be  seen.  Having  reached  the  shore,  he  caught  up 
one  of  the  skins,  and  made  off  with  it  as  fast  and 
as  secretly  as  lie  could  towards  his  home.  Jle 
knew  well  that  the  seal-woman  would  follow  where 
her  skin  had  been  talvcn,  so  he  hid  it  cunningly  in 
the  thatcli  of  his  house,  where  no  one  \vould  be 
likely  to  think  of  looking  lor  it. 

When  the  seals  had  had  their  fill  of  dancing  and 
play  on  the  shore,  they  went  back  to  look  foi-  their 
skins,  and  their  surprise  was  great  to  find  that  one 
of  these  was  missing. 

That  night,  O'Toole  was  sitting  in  his  house, 
when,  as  ho  had  expected,  a  beautiful  woman  in 
her  bare  pelt  came  to  the  door  and  asked  him  to  give 
licr  back  her  coat.  Tie  did  not,  let  on  that  liolviiew 
anything  al)out  it,  tlu)ugli  she  cried  and  moaned 
and  Ijcsought  him  to  give  it  l)ack  again.  He  held 
out  so  well,  and  had  hidden  the  skin  so  cleverly, 
that  in  the  end  she  had  to  settle  down  and  stay  on 
in  his  house,  for  she  could  not  go  away  without 
her  skin. 


STORIES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     73 

Well,  she  lived  there  a  good  number  of  years, 
and  had  four  children,  and  O'Toole  and  she  were  very 
happy  together,  when  one  day  during  his  absence 
a  lire  broke  out  in  the  house.  It  soon  spread  to 
the  tliatcli,  and  there  was  a  queer  smell  of  singeing. 
The  woman  knew  it  was  her  seal's  coat  was  burning, 
and  climbed  up  to  where  it  was,  and,  when  she  had 
found  it,  off  with  her  to  the  water  as  fast  as  she 
was  able.  She  forgot  all  about  her  husband  and 
all  about  her  children,  and  notliing  would  do  her 
but  she  must  get  into  the  seal-skin  again,  and  go 
out  swimming  into  the  sea  where  the  other  seals 
were.  O'Toole  never  got  her  back  again,  but  there 
was  a  hole  in  tlie  seal's  coat  where  it  had  been 
burnt  by  the  fire,  and  when  the  seals  came  up 
swimming  near  tlie  land  you  could  tell  this  one 
by  tlie  burnt  patch. 

"  You  needn't  l)clieve  the  story,"  said  the  man 
who  told  it  to  me,  "if  you  don't  like  ;  but  it's  a 
queer  thing  the  O'Tooles  have  always  been  known 
for  their  short  arms.  And  if  you  called  one  of 
them  a  seal,  there  would  be  murder." 

Ireland — at  least,  that  part  of  it  which  lies 
wilhin  sound  of  the  sea — is  full  of  stoiies  like 
this.  "  It  would  not  do  to  injure  a  seal,"  said 
an  old  Kerry  (isherman  to  a  friend  of  mine  ;  "  the 
seals  are  God's  blessed  creatures." 

On  the  other  hand,  if  it  is  wrong  for  a  man  to 
work  injury  among  the  creatures  of  the  deep,  it  is 
equally  wrong  to  have  commerce  with  them  of  a 
more  intimate  kind.     Old  people  of  Kilkee  will 


74         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

tell  you  of  a  man  who  used  to  be  there  within 
living  memory,  and  who  took  a  mermaid  as  his 
wife.  No])ody  in  the  place  would  speak  to  him,  or 
have  anything  to  do  with  him. 

The  sea  is  full  of  strange  mysteries,  indeed,  and 
the  best  course  for  men  is  to  walk  warily  and 
separately  among  them.  I  was  out  in  a  lonely 
part  of  St  John's  l^oint  in  Donegal  about  two 
years  ago,  where  a  friend  of  mine  was  examining 
the  dilapidated  fragments  of  an  old  church.  Near 
the  ruin  was  a  kind  of  harbour  where  some  fishing- 
boats  lay,  and  a  number  of  fishermen  were  pidliug 
out  a  boat  full  of  their  bi'owu  nests  over  the  heavy, 
pur[)h3  \val<',r.  There  was  a  youiig  man  standing 
beside  me,  dressed  in  Sunday  respectabibty,  an 
extraordinarily  handsome,  strong  man,  with  dark, 
shining  hair,  and  eyes  the  colour  of  a  dark  pool 
among  rocks.  His  bowler-hat  and  the  watch-cliain 
running  across  his  waist-coat,  with  a  medal  iianging 
from  it,  gave  him  an  air  of  town  ordinariness  for 
all  his  beauty.  We  got  into  conversation  about  the 
fishing  in  those  parts,  and  he  was  telling  me  how 
the  fish  were  being  destroyed  at  a  terrible  rate  by 
some  curious  kind  of  monster.  I  said  that  1  sup- 
posed he  meant  porpoises. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  [)i-'rha[)s  yon  miglit  call  tliem 
porpoises,  but  they're  no  por])oises."  I  asked  him 
what  did  he  think  they  were  then. 

*'  I  don't  know  whether  tlierc's  any  name  for 
them,"  he  said.  "But  I  call  them  magic  fish,  for 
there's  maaic  in  them,  and  all  the  fishermen  here 


SrOIlIES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     75 

know  it.  One  of  them  came  into  tlie  bay  there 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Point  last  year,  and  the 
fishermen  had  the  idea  that  it  was  a  porpoise,  and 
tlic  Covernment  sent  round  a  ])oat  to  destroy  it. 
I>ut  when  tliey  hnd  this  one  destroyed,  it's  a  queer 
tiling  they  could  find  no  sign  of  its  body,  but  two 
other  ones  came  in  its  place  to  look  for  vengeance 
for  it.  Tiiere's  no  use  trying  to  destroy  them, 
because,  for  every  one  you  destroy,  there'll  come 
two  others  in  place  of  it.  And  tlie  fishermen 
know  that  now."  1  do  not  remendjcr  whether  lie 
mentioned  any  other  way,  save  the  way  of  war,  to 
get  rid  of  these  magic  enemies. 

In  some  parts  of  the  country.,  where  the  imagina- 
tions of  the  people  are  not  filled  with  the  sea 
and  its  miracles,  a  beast  whicli  causes  most  ex- 
(|uisite  tej'ior  is  one  whicli  1  always  heard  called 
in  my  childhood  by  the  name  of  the  "man-keeper."  ^ 
Jt  is  a  children's  bogey.  It  is,  I  think,  something 
about  the  size  of  a  frog,  and  it  haunts  spring  wells. 
I  know  that,  when  I  was  a  child,  1  never  got  down 
on  my  knees  l)eside  a  country  well  for  a  drink  of 
water  without  looking  carefully  to  see  whether  the 
eye  of  this  small  monster  was  anywhere  watching 
me.  If  a  man-keeper  catches  you  drinking  out  of 
a  well,  he  always  makes  straight  for  your  mouth, 
and,  no  matter  how  tight  you  may  close  it,  he  will 
force  his  way  in.  1  used  to  hear  a  story  of  a  man 
near  Maghera,  in  County  Derry,  who  was  chased 
by  a  man-keeper.     He  ran  down  the  road  with  all 

'  The  lizard,  I  suppose. 


7&         HOME  LIFE   IN  IRELAND 

liis  niiglit,  Jiiid,  fueling  that  he  was  Ijoiiig  over- 
taken, lie  made  a  superliuniau  eflort,  and  leaped 
over  a  six-foot  hedge  into  a  Held.  The  man- 
kee^^er  leaped  the  hedge,  too,  and  with  a  series  of 
vicious  little  jumps  and  wrigglings  got  into  his 
shut  mouth,  and,  I  suppose,  into  his  stomach. 
Salt,  they  say,  is  the  only  thing  with  which  the 
evil  beast  can  be  forced  into  the  open  world  again, 
and  it  was  with  salt  the  Mao;hera  man  was  treated 
when  he  reached  home  in  torture. 

I  remember  tliere  were  horrible  tales  about 
dangers  from  weasels  and  whiltrets  which  ati'ected 
my  childish  imagination  almost  as  painfully  as 
man-keepers.  It  was  said  that,  if  you  injured  a 
weasel,  it  woidd  whistle  on  the  other  weasels  in 
the  neighbourhood,  and  that  they  wouhl  all  come 
together  in  answer  to  the  call,  and  give  you  the 
chase  of  your  life. 

There  are  a  good  many  stories  in  Ireland  which 
have  nothing  to  tlo  with  either  fairies  or  with 
animals,  magical  or  otherwise,  ])ut  arc  a  part  of 
the  religious  imagination  of  the  people.  lilvery 
holy  well  in  the  country — and  they  are  suflieiently 
numerous— has  its  cycle  of  stories  of  marvellous 
cures,  and  the  votive  rags  of  those  whom  God  has 
restored  to  sight,  or  to  purity  of  Ijlood,  or  to  the 
power  of  walking,  flutter  on  the  thorn-trees  near 
them,  a  testimony  to  the  Irish  faith  in  the  eternal 
wonderfulness  of  life.  There  are  many  secular 
stories  of  the  saints,  too,  which  still  continue  among 
the  peo})le — stories  of  brave  adventures  in  tlie  old 


STORIES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     11 

times,    and    of    timely    interventions    in    modern 
days. 

1  heard  a  gruesome  story  not  long  ago  of  the 
help  given  by  a  saint  to  a  young  married  woman 
in  time  of  need.  She  was  married  to  an  old 
farmer,  wlio  lived  in  a  lonely  place,  a  mile  and 
more  away  from  any  otlier  house,  and  she  had  nob 
been  married  long  when  one  night,  in  the  middle 
of  the  night,  he  took  sick  without  any  warning. 
She  got  up  and  called  the  servant-girl  to  go  and 
get  help,  and  while  the  girl  was  away  the  old 
man  died  on  her.  She  laid  him  out,  and  then 
sat  down  to  watcl)  till  the  neighbours  came. 
Suddenly  the  corpse  rose  up  in  the  bed  and  began 
to  make  the  most  fearful  faces,  for  it  had  died 
without  anoiutnicnt,  and  the  devil  was  in  it.  It 
would  lie  back  and  then  sit  up  niid  be<^in  niMkiiig 
fac(^s  ag.uii,  and  the  poor  woman  was  nearly  at 
her  wits'  end  with  terror.  It  kept  doing  this 
for  a  long  time,  and  she  praying  and  nearly  out 
of  her  mind,  when  a  knock  came  at  the  door,  and 
she  let  in  a  tall  man,  dressed  something  like  a 
soldier,  and  with  a  piece  of  a  stick,  or  a  wand,  in 
his  hand.  He  went  over  to  the  side  of  the  bed 
where  the  corpse  was,  and  touched  it  with  the 
stick,  and  it  lay  Ijack  on  tlie  bed  calm  and  quiet. 
Then  he  sat  down  to  watch  with  the  woman,  and 
every  time  the  corpse  moved  he  touched  it  again, 
and  it  subsided. 

He  stayed  with   her  till   near  dawn,  and  just 
before  he  was  going  he  turned  to  her  and  put  the 


78         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

stick  into  her  hand,  and  said,  "  Take  tliis,  and 
whenever  lie  l)egins  to  make  faces,  just  touch  him 
on  tlie  shouhler  with  tlie  stick,  and  he'll  lie  (hjwn 
aoaiu.  lie  died  without  oil,  and  the  devil's  in 
him,  and,  if  1  hadn't  come,  he  would  have  got  up 
and  torn  you  to  pieces."  She  thanked  him  for 
his  kindness,  and  he  was  turning  to  go  away,  when 
she  said,  "  But  before  you  go,  you  must  tell  me 
who  it  is  I  have  to  thank  for  what  you've  just 
done.  I  see  you're  not  a  priest,  and  I  don't  think 
you're  a  doctor,  but  who  are  you  ? "  "  Well," 
he  said,  "  do  you  remember  hast  All  Hallows'  Eve, 
when  you  and  the  other  girls  were  drawing  lots 
for  what  saints  you  would  have  to  protect  you 
during  the  year,  and  you  drew  Saint  Dominic? 
The  other  girls  laughed  at  you,  but  you  said  you 
were  quite  content  with  the  saint  you  had  drawn. 
AVell,  I'm  Saint  Dominic,  and  this  night  I  have 
come  to  reward  you."  So  he  left  her  the  stick, 
and,  every  time  the  corpse  would  try  to  get  up 
and  make  faces,  she  hit  it  a  tap,  and  it  lay  down 
aoain.  In  regard  to  this  story,  1  may  say  it  is 
still  a  Hallowe'en  game  in  some  parts  of  Catholic 
Ireland  to  draw  lots  out  of  a  hat  for  guardian 
saints. 

I  have  not  yet  touched  upon  one  of  the  most 
interesting  of  all  the  streams  of  story-telling 
which  are  to  be  found  in  Ireland — tlie  legends 
of  the  heroes  who  loom  over  the  beginnings 
of  Irish  history  with  something  of  the  immense 
o-lory   of  the  gods  and  the  demi-gods  of  Greece. 


STORIES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS     79 

Lady  Gregory  lias  i)ut  the  world  iu  her  debt  by 
collecting  these  stories  in  at  least  one  imperishable 
volume,  "  Gods  and  Fighting  Men,"  and  in  another 
which  is  full  of  beautiful  things,  "  Cuchullain  of 
Muirthcmne."  Most  of  these  stories  she  found 
in  books  and  in  manuscripts,  but  bits  of  them 
she  heard,  too,  from  the  lips  of  country  people 
with  inherited  memories.  In  proof  of  the  long 
memories  of  the  people,  she  tells  us  in  one  of  her 
essays  how  some  time  ago  a  poem  was  taken 
down  from  a  countryman,  and  how  the  same 
poem  was  iifterwards  found  in  a  generations-old 
manuscript  in  the  Irish  Academy.  "  There  was 
only  one  word  different,"  she  says,  "  between  the 
written  and  the  spoken  version,  and  in  that  it 
was  m.'uiin^st  that  the  j>en  had  made  tlie  slip  and 
not  the  tongue."  These  poems  and  stories, 
naturally,  arc  remembered  most  clearly  where  the 
people  sjieak  Irish,  and  the  exactness  with  which 
a  poem  like  that  just  mentioned  has  been  handed 
down  through  the  generations  helps  us  to  under- 
stand how  the  Homeric  epics  may  have  survived 
so  long  before  they  were  ever  put  into  writing. 

Speaking  about  heroic  stories  reminds  me  of  the 
surprise  I  once  felt,  when  I  was  in  County  Sligo, 
to  hear  from  a  farmer  a  story  which  Mr  Neil 
Munro  has  told  in  his  most  delightful  book,  "  The 
Lost  Pibroch." 

Sligo  is  a  county  overmarked  with  little  circular 
forts  which  some  associate  with  f^iiries,  some  with 
old  Danish  invaders.     The  farmer  was  talkiuLf  to 


80         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

me  about  the  Danes,  wlicii  a  land-afrent  who  was 
present  said  to  him,  "Don't  tliey  say  the  Danes 
used  to  make  some  kind  of  jjeer  out  of  heather  ? " 
The  farmer  said  yes,  hut  that  no  one  now  knew 
how  they  did  it,  and  then  he  tokl  us  the  story  of 
the  chieftain  who  sacrificed  his  sons  and  himself 
rather  than  let  the  Danes  know  tlie  secret  of  his 
clan.  The  story  was  more  blurred  than,  in  ]\lr 
Munro's  version,  but  it  was  essentially  the  same, 
and  those  who  wish  to  read  one  of  the  best  of 
short  stories  should  turn  to  Mr  JMuiu'o's  "The 
Secret  of  the  Heather  Ale,"  Some  people  may 
imagine  that  the  farmer  read  the  story  in  "  The 
Lost  Pibroch,"  but  I  am  certain  that  it  came  from 
tradition,  and  that  Mr  Munro  himself  heard  the 
story  from  some  old  Gael  on  a  Scottish  hill-side. 

Lately,  many  enthusiastic  people  have  been 
going  among  the  Irish-speakers  and  taking  down 
the  old  stories,  and  a  good  many  of  these  have 
been  pulilished  in  the  Irish  language.  ]\rost  of 
th(!  stories  which  have  been  collected  have  been 
in  the  nature  of  fairy-tales  rather  than  heroic  and 
semi-historical  legends,  but  even  of  the  latter 
there  has  been  a  considerable  share.  ,  Naturally, 
many  of  the  stories  are  only  remembered  in  hints 
and  glimpses,  and  the  imagination  of  the  people 
has  too  often  become  confused  as  a  result  of 
poverty  and  long  subjection.  Lady  Gregory 
gives  us  an  instance  of  the  mixed  condition  into 
which  some  of  the  stories  have  fallen.  She  was 
told  on  Slieve  Echtsfe  that  "  Oisin  and  Finn  took 


STORIES  AND  SUPEKSTITIONS     81 

the  lead  for  strength,  aud  Samson,  too,  he  had 
great  strength."  "  I  would  rather  hear  about  the 
Irish  strong  men,"  she  said.  "Well,"  was  the 
reply,  "and  Samson  was  of  the  Irish  race,  all  the 
world  was  Irish  in  those  times,  and  he  killed 
the  Philistines,  and  the  eyes  were  picked  out  of 
him  after.  He  was  said  to  be  the  strongest,  but 
I  think  myself  Finn  MacCumhall  was  stronger." 

I  believe  Irish  imaginations  will  return  soon  to 
a  consciousness  of  that  literature  of  beauty  and 
nobleness  in  which  it  expressed  so  long  ago  its 
abundant  joy  in  living.  It  is  impossible  to 
pnulict  exactly  the  cIVcct  which  this  will  have  on 
Irish  life  aud  art  and  literature.  We  cannot  be 
sure  that  in  the  result  Ireland  will  produce  a  great 
drama,  like  the  legend-loving  Greek,  or  a  great 
music-drama,  like  the  l(\gcnd-loviiig  (Jcrmaii.  Wo 
can  be  sure,  however,  that  Irish  life  will  become 
infinitely  richer  when  it  is  coloured  with  a  sense 
of  its  heroic  circumstances.  It  will  be  put,  too, 
in  the  way  of  building  up  a  great  home  litera- 
ture, for  memory  and  imagination  will  be  restored 
to  it,  and  these,  with  character  aud  passion,  are 
the  makers  of  all  the  beautiful  things  in  the  world. 
Of  memory  and  imagination — even  of  character 
and  passion — the  Irish  heroic  stories  are  clear  and 
inexhaustible  wells. 


CHAPTER  V 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN 


Tf  you  wish  to  obtain  both  the  liappiest  and  the 
imliappiest  look  at  contemporary  IrcLand,  you 
must  go  into  the  National  Schools — the  word 
"  National,"  of  course,  being  used  in  a  strictly 
Pickwickian  sense.  The  cliildren,  vivacious,  alert, 
quick-eyed,  are  a  golden  proof  that,  despite  all  the 
emigration  and  decay  and  jioverty,  Ireland  is  not 
yet  a  ruined  country,  but  has  even  now  within  her 
the  makings  of  a  pleasant  and  virile  nation.  The 
school  buildings,  on  the  other  hand,  too  often  bear 
witness  to  the  fact  that  by  the  authorities  who 
govern  Ireland  the  cliild  is  made  of  less  account 
than  the  criminal.  Oidy  a  revolutionist  at  the 
present  moment  would  pr()})ose  that  the  authorities 
should  make  the  schoolhouse  as  clean,  say,  as  a 
church,  or  as  comfortable  as  a  police-barracks. 

At  the  same  time  there  is  a  great  deal  of 
mournful  nonsense  talked  aljout  llie  schools  of 
Irehmd.  One  sometimes  hears  the  National 
Schools  spoken  of  as  though  they  were  for  the 
most  part  lilthy  barns — with  birds  flying  in  and  out 
through  the  holes  in  the  roof,  or,  should  the  school 
not  be   ventilated   in   this  ready   way,    haunts  of 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN         83 

fetid  and  disease-laden  air  in  which  children  jrrow 
up  with  pale  faces,  dull  eyes,  and  songless  voices. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  many  of  the  town  schools, 
especially  in  Belfast,  are  overcrowded  and  un- 
Jicalthy,  and  that  some  of  the  country  schools  arc 
more  exposed  to  tJic  moods  of  tlie  sky  (,luin  ia 
pardonable  in  a  wet  country.  It  is  equally  true, 
however,  that  many  of  the  schools  are  clean  and 
merry  places,  and  that  children  bloom  liealthily  in 
them,  and  grow  up  as  unconsumptive-looking  as 
clergymen. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  condition  of  the  schools 
depends  largely  upon  the  individual  temperaments 
of  that  badly-treated  body  of  men  and  women,  the 
National  school-teachers.  The  school-teacher  is 
sometimes  represented  to  us  as  a  pauper  ignoramus, 
a  bumptious  loathcr  of  his  trade,  who  is  the  fourth 
person  in  the  tyiannical  vilhige  liierarchy,  the 
other  three  being  the  priest  or  parson,  the 
gombeen-man  and  the  policeman,  lie  is  un- 
questionably as  often  as  not  a  pauper  ;  he  begins 
his  career  at  a  salary  of  £58 — in  the  case  of 
women  teachers  the  salary  is  £48 — but,  on  the 
whole,  considering  their  miserable  opportunities,  I 
am  inclined  to  think  that  no  class  of  Irish  men 
and  women  serve  their  country  more  faithfully 
according  to  their  lights  than  the  teachers  in  the 
National  Schools. 

I  have  said  tliat  the  good  or  bad  condition  ol 
any  particular  school  is  due  for  tlie  most  part  tc 
the  teacher  who  happens  to  be  in   charge  of  it 


84         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

The  National  Board  provides  no  caretaker  to  see 
that  the  floors  are  swept,  or  the  walls  hung  with 
pictures,  or  the  fires  lit.  If  the  floor  is  to  he  swept, 
the  teacher  must  either  do  it  himself,  or  get  some 
of  the  puj^ils  to  do  it  for  him.  If  pictures  are 
needed  for  the  walls,  the  teacher  must  paint  them 
himself — which,  thank  heaven,  he  can  seldom  do — 
or  buy  them  with  his  wages,  or  tear  them  out  of 
the  English  magazines.  Worse  still,  if  the  school 
is  to  l)e  kept  warm  during  the  winter,  the  teacher 
must  once  more  put  his  fingers  into  his  purse  and 
provide  liis  share  of  the  coal  or  turf  supply.  Tiie 
custom  is,  no  doubt,  that  tlie  pupils,  or  their 
parents,  should  contri])ute  either  in  money  or  in 
kind  to  tlie  keeping  up  of  the  fires.  In  the  towns 
and  in  districts  wlicre  turf  is  not  used,  tlie  con- 
tribution is  usually  in  money. 

In  some  of  the  poorer  districts  where  turf  is 
plentiful,  however,  the  labourer's  child  may  still  ])e 
seen  of  a  winter's  morning  carrying  his  sod  of  turf 
to  the  schoolhouse  as  his  share  of  the  l)urden  of  the 
expenses  of  a  warm,  if  otherwise  unsatisfactory, 
education.  The  farmer  as  a  rule  spares  his  son 
such  an  indignity  by  sending  round  an  occasional 
cart-load  of  turf  to  the  school  durinor  the  cold 
months.  The  amount  of  fuel  supplied  in  this 
way,  it  may  be  said,  is  rarely  sullicicnt  for  the 
needs  of  the  school,  and  either  the  pupils  must  be 
left  to  starve  in  the  cold,  or  the  teacher  has  to 
pay  for  the  extra  amount  required.  I  have  heard 
of  children — children  who  were  not  iriven  to  blub- 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN         85 

bering  eitlier — cryiug  regularly  as  they  were  sent 
off  to  school  on  winter  mornings.  These  were  bare- 
footed children,  and  the  schools  had  stone  floors, 
and  were  without  fires,  so  tljat  the  tears,  perhaps, 
were  not  without  justification. 

Obviously,  the  Irish  teachers'  lines  are  not  cast 
in  superabundant  places.  1  have  been  all  the  more 
surprised  by  the  energy  and  cheerfulness  with 
which  some  of  them  throw  themselves  into  their 
work,  and  with  the  clean  bright  look  they  manage 
to  j)ut  on  their  schools.  Some  of  the  schools  it 
would  be  impossible  to  kecj)  clean  or  bright.  1 
have  seen  schools  in  the  County  of  Tippcrary  in 
which  holes  had  been  worn  in  the  floor  by  the 
drip  of  the  rain  through  corresponding  holes  in 
the  roof,  and  where  the  ivy  had  pushed  its  way 
through  numberless  cracks,  and  was  clambering  in 
case  aud  disciise  over  the  walls  and  the  ceibug. 
On  the  otiier  hand,  1  have  seen  schools  in  County 
Limerick,  where  everything  was  neat  and  sound 
and  healthy,  and  where  portraits  of  Wolfe  Tone 
and  Douglas  Hyde  aud  Daniel  O'Connell,  and  other 
notable  Irishmen,  looked  inspiringly  from  the  walls, 
not  to  mention  pardonable  prettinesses  in  colour 
from  the  Christmas  numbers.  These  schools  were 
little  nests  of  music  and  cheerfulness — centres  of 
country  light  and  eager  spirits.  If  they  were 
iiienicieiit,  it  was  nob  the  fa,u1t  of  the  teachers,  Imt 
ol"  a  system  of  government  whicli  discoura,ges  the 
peo})le  of  Ireland  from  taking  an  interest  in 
education. 


86         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

This  brings  us  to  tlie  fact  that  a  priest,  parson 
or  minister,  is  almost  invarial)ly  the  manager  of 
the  National  School,  and  that,  even  though  he 
may  not  care  very  much  about  education  himself, 
he  is  inclined  to  be  suspicious  when  any  one  else 
threatens  to  care  about  it.  In  the  Protestant 
churches,  the  clergyman  too  often  regards  the 
teacher  as  a  useful  hack,  good  for  jJaying  tiie  organ 
on  Sunday,  or  teaching  a  Sunday-school  class,  and 
so  forth,  and  under  the  Catholic  priest  the  teacher 
is  not  usually  said  to  enjoy  any  greater  esteem. 

The  odd  thing  is  that,  in  spite  of  all  the  sectarian 
turmoil  and  tyranny  in  Irish  (idiication,  the  National 
(Schools  are  among  the  most  non-sectarian  imagin- 
able. Go  into  a  priest-managed  school  in  Ireland, 
and  you  will  hear  no  word  of  religious  teaching 
outside  the  hour  set  apart  for  it ;  you  will  see  no 
statue  of  the  Mother  of  God,  surrounded  with 
faded  llowers,  in  a  nook  in  the  walls,  such  as  you 
will  see  in  a  priest-managed  school  in  England. 
If  you  must  compare  the  buildings  to  barns,  they 
resemble  barns  in  nothing  so  much  as  in  their 
non-sectarian,  not  to  say  non-religious,  character. 
The  Christian  Brothers,  a  lay  Catholic  order,  have 
a  number  of  schools  in  tlie  more  prosperous  centres, 
free  of  the  control  of  the  National  Board  and 
provided  with  the  emblems  of  ndigion.  An  ex- 
pupil  of  one  of  these  schools  told  me  how  he  and 
his  companions  used  to  despise  the  ordinary  non- 
sectarian  priest -managed  schools  as  institutions 
that  had  "  given  in  to  the  enemy." 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN         87 

One  bappy  consequence  of  this  absence  of 
sectarianism  from  the  atmosphere  of  the  schools 
is  that  Protestant  chiklrcn  attend  Catholic  schools, 
and  Catholic  cliihlren  Protestant  schools,  in  much 
greater  numbers  than  is  generally  realised.  Three 
years  ago,  there  were  8559  Protestant  pupils 
studying  in  schools  exclusively  under  Catholic 
teachers,  and  5174  Catholic  pupils  in  schools 
exclusively  under  Protestant  teachers.  These 
figures  arc,  1  admit,  low  enough,  in  comparison 
witli  tlic  size  of  the  scliool-going  po[)ulation,  but 
they  show  that  the  religious  compartments  in  Irish 
(xlucation  arc  not  quite  water-tight.  (The  Ten 
Commandments,  by  the  way,  are,  by  order  of  the 
National  Board,  hung  on  squares  of  card-board 
from  the  walls  of  every  school-building,  but  I 
never  heard  of  any  of  the  pupils  of  either  religion 
leaving  school  any  tlie  worse  for  this.)  I  have  seen 
Protestant  children  enthusiastically  learning  Irish, 
and  singing  Irish  songs  in  Catholic  schools  in  the 
south.  This,  too,  was  in  a  district  where  a  few 
years  ago  political  passion  ran  so  high  that  the 
priest  called  for  a  boycott,  not  only  of  the  police- 
men in  the  district,  but  of  tlic  policemen's  children. 
In  the  Catholic  parts  of  Ireland,  })00ple  have  often 
been  boycotted  for  political  reasons,  practically 
never  for  religious  reasons. 

One  of  the  many  things  which  I  dislike  in  the 
educational  system  in  Ireland  is  the  early  age  at 
which  children  are  permitted  to  begin  going  to 
school.     This  seems  all  the  worse  as  the  ordinary 


88  HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

school  hours  are  from  ten  in  the  morning  till  three 
in  the  afternoon.  I  was  in  a  country  school  lately 
where  some  of  tlie  children  were  only  three  years 
old,  and  I  do  not  like  to  see  an  infant  thrust  thus 
early  into  the  atmosphere  of  learning,  unless  where 
there  are  crabbed  or  debauched  parents  darkening 
the  home.  The  evil  sort  of  parents,  I  may  say  in 
passing,  are  rare,  outside  the  slums  in  the  big  cities 
of  Ireland.  Even  in  the  slums — and  there  are 
slums  in  Dublin  that  would  disfigure  the  civilisa- 
tion of  any  place  or  any  period — cruelty  of  the 
fiendish  kind,  of  which  one  occasionally  hears 
among  the  poor  and  dogencrat(3  in  England,  is 
practically  unknown.  A  liigh  official  in  the 
Society  for  the  I'reventiou  of  Cruelly  for  Children 
has  told  me  that  there  is  no  comparison  between 
England  and  Ireland  in  regard  to  the  treatment  of 
children.  One  occasionally  hears,  of  course,  of  a 
drunken  mother  who  parts  with  her  child  to 
proselytising  agents  for  the  sake  of  quietness  and 
gin.  It  is  also  true  that,  in  cases  of  })areutal 
cruelty,  the  clergy  usually  have  the  child  removed 
to  some  humane  atmosphere  long  before  things 
have  reached  the  stage  demanding  the  attention  of 
the  Society  for  the  rrevention  of  Ci-ueUy  to 
Children.  Still,  from  all  1  have  seen  and  heard, 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  lot  of  the  Irish 
child  is,  so  far  as  its  parents  know  how  to  make 
it  so,  usually  a  not  unenviable  one. 

This  is  in  explanation  of  the  pleasant,  variable 
faces  one  sees  so  often  on  the  children  in  the  Irish 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN         89 

scliools.  They  are  clean  faces,  too,  as  children's  faces 
go,  and  one  sometimes  sees  a  basin  of  water  in  the 
school-porch  where  they  may  wash  their  hands  as 
they  go  in.  They  are,  for  the  most  part,  bare- 
footed, some  from  necessity,  some  from  choice — at 
least,  in  the  summer—  for  boots  are  becoming 
commoner  in  Ireland  every  day.  I  have  known 
children  who  were  sent  off  from  home  wearing 
boots,  but  who  took  these  and  their  stockings  off 
as  soon  as  tlicy  wore  out  of  reach  of  their  mother's 
eye,  in  order  that  their  feet  might  enjoy  tlie 
greater  coolness  and  liljerty  along  the  grassy  sides 
of  the  road.  Tliere  is,  it  is  pleasant  to  know,  an 
almost  perfect  democracy  of  feeling  in  the  Irish 
schools.  The  farmer's  daughter  in  her  boots  and 
her  bright  pinafore  wears  no  airs  of  superiority 
over  the  bare-footed  labourer's  child  with  too  few 
buttons  and  too  many  raggednesses  showing  in 
her  faded  dress.  The  boys  mix  freely  in  tbeir 
games  as  in  tlieir  classes,  and  many  frieudBhips 
begin  which  are  only  broken  when  differences  of 
wealth  and  environment  at  last  compel  the  grown- 
up youths  into  separate  worlds. 

I  ho[)C  1  have  said  nothing  to  give  the  impres- 
sion that  everything,  or  indeed  auytliing,  in  the 
Irisli  educational  system  is  in  a  fairly  satisfactory 
condition.  I  have  merely  stated  certain  human 
facts  in  answer  to  those  who,  for  political  reasons 
or  from  a  tradition  of  scntimentalism,  are  always 
drawing  pictures  of  licland  as  a  ruin  and  a  helpless 
desolation.     The  Irish  schools  are  not  the  schools 


90         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  a  ruined  and  helpless  people.  They  are  the 
schools  rather  of  a  people  who  have  been  for  along- 
time  intellectually  aimless— who  have  allowed  out- 
siders to  take  their  money  and  spend  it  for  them, 
and  to  dictate  the  lines  upon  which  their  education 
should  he  run.  This,  indeed,  is  the  worst  that  you 
can  say  of  the  schools.  However  white  may  be  their 
walls,  however  lively  and  lovely  the  faces  of  the 
children,  however  blameless  tlie  intentions  of  the 
teachers,  the  National  Schools  were  not  established 
to  meet  the  needs  of  Ireland,  but  to  fulfil  certain 
political  objects.  Instead  of  fitting  boys  and  girls 
to  live  useful  and  charming  lives  in  Ireland, 
they  were  used  as  a  means  of  making  the  children 
forget  that  there  was  any  such  country  as  Ireland. 
It  will  be  no  harm,  perhaps,  to  give  some  well- 
known  instances  of  this. 

In  the  early  half  of  last  century,  when  the  school 
readers  were  being  pre]iare<l,  it  was  proposed  by  a 
Scotch  Presbyterian  minister  on  the  controlling 
Board  to  iiudude  Sir  Walter  Scott's  lines,  "  Breathes 
there  a  man  with  soid  so  dead,"  etc,  in  one  of 
them.  Archbishop  Whately,  who  had  been 
entrusted  by  the  English  Government  with  the 
work  of  civilising  Ireland,  caught  sight  of  the 
words,  and,  realising  how  indecent  was  the  sen- 
timent they  might  convey  to  the  imaginations 
of  Irish  children,  insisted  upon  their  omission. 
Poetry  about  things  like  Irish  harpers  was  treated 
in  the  same  summary  w^ay,  and  children  were  tauglit 
to  repeat,  instead  of  the  sincere  songs  of  their  own 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN         91 

people,    a  pseudo-rcli tenons  jingle    containing  the 
words  : — 

I  thank  tlic  goodness  and  the  grace 

That  on  my  birth  have  smiled, 
And  made  nio  in  those  Christian  days 
A  happy  English  child. 

The  chief  lesson  to  be  learned  bj  the  school 
cliildren  was  ignorance — not  to  say  contempt — of 
Ireland  and  everything  Irish,  and  reverence  for 
England  and  everything  English.  Even  in  districts 
where  Irish  was  tlie  only  language  spoken,  the 
children  were  taught  that  English  and  not  Irish 
was  their  native  language.  "On  the  east  of 
Ireland,"  runs  a  passage  in  one  of  the  archiepiscopal 
school-books,  "  is  England,  where  the  Queen  lives  ; 
many  people  who  live  in  Ireland  were  born  in 
England,  and  we  sp(3ak  the  same  language,  and 
arc  callcfl  the  same  nation."  This  passage  was 
written,  be  it  noted,  at  a  time  when  the  Irish 
language  was  still  spoken  by  probably  half  the 
Irish  people. 

The  authorities,  liowever,  did  not  like  the  Irish 
language  and  so  they  affected  to  believe  that  it  did 
not  exist.  Teachers  who  knew  no  Irish  were  put 
in  charge  of  schools  where  the  pupils  knew  no 
English,  and  the  absurd  spectacle  was  common  of 
a  teacher  trying  to  instruct  in  reading,  writing  and 
arithmetic  children  who  did  not  understand  a 
word  he  said.  I  met  an  English-speaking  teacher 
the  otlicr  day  who  began  his  career  in  a  Galway 
school  in  which  all   tlic  childrcji  were  exclusively 


92         HOME  LIFE  IN   IKELAND 

Irish  speaking.  I  asked  him  liow  on  earth  he 
managed.  "  Damned  badly,"  he  said  with  a  twinkle. 
It  is  only  fair  to  him  to  say  that,  if  he  performed 
de-Irishising  work,  he  did  it  reluctantly  and  not 
with  a  punitive  enthusiasm,  as  some  of  the  teachers 
did.  In  many  places,  teacher,  priest  and  parent 
combined  with  the  authorities  in  stamping  out  all 
knowledge  of  the  native  language  from  the  minds 
of  the  children.  The  children  were  forbidden  to 
speak  any  Irish  in  the  schools,  and  they  carried 
little  tally-sticks  hung  round  their  necks  so  that, 
every  time  they  lapsed  into  Irish  intheirhomes,  their 
parents  might  cut  a  notch  in  these  and  the  teacher 
might  award  as  many  strokes  of  the  cane  as  he 
found  notches  in  the  tidly-stick  on  the  next 
morning. 

It  is  difficult  to  forgive  a  generation  of  parents, 
priests,  politicians  and  teachers  who  thus  flogged 
the  children  of  the  country  out  of  the  knowledge 
of  their  natural  speech.  Many  parents,  it  is  clear, 
looking  at  the  course  of  events  in  the  world,  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  English  was  the  languaoe  of 
success  and  Irish  the  language  of  decay  and  starva- 
tion. If  they  punished  their  children  for  being 
Irish,  they  thought  they  were  punishing  bread- 
and-butter  into  their  stomachs,  if  not  the  bread  of 
life  into  their  souls.  Curious  to  relate,  this  idea 
is  not  dead  among  Irish-speaking  parents  even  to- 
day. Those  who  know  English,  though  they 
speak  Irish  to  each  other  and  to  grown-up  neigh- 
bours, very  often    drop   into  English  when    they 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN         93 

address  their  children.  They  still  think  that 
English  is  the  language  of  respectability — an  idea 
that  is  only  dying  slowly  under  the  persistent 
assaults  of  the  Gaelic  League  propaganda.  The 
priest  nearly  always  preaches  in  it,  the  member  of 
Pai'liameiit  or.'i.tes  in  it,  the  newspapers  are  written 
in  it,  and  how,  in  face  of  all  this,  is  an  average 
badly-educated  parent  to  guess  that  the  praise  of 
the  Irish  language  is  anything  but  the  jingle- 
jangle  of  hare-brained  agitators  ? 

It  will  be  seen  from  what  I  have  said  that  the 
National  Schools  were  intended  to  destroy  any 
traces  of  an  Irish  civilisation  that  were  left  by  the 
early  part  of  last  century.  They  have  been  fairly 
successful  in  accomplishing  the  aims  of  their 
founders,  and  there  were  probably  fewer  signs  of 
an  interestino;  and  distinct  civilisation  in  Ireland 
during  the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  ccntuiy 
than  at  any  other  period  of  the  country's  history. 
The  present  adult  population  of  Ireland  is  probably 
the  least  Irish,  the  least  interesting,  the  least 
capable  of  beauty  of  thought  and  effort,  that  ever 
inherited  the  five  provinces.  The  present  genera- 
tion of  growing  children  is  likely  to  jirovc  the 
very  opposite.  Moderate  people  like  myself  believe 
that  there  is  at  present  growing  up  to  manhood  and 
womanhood  in  Ireland  a  race  of  boys  and  girls 
who  will  make  sure  the  foundations  of  a  new 
civilisation,  and  so  leave  a  long  memory  after 
them. 

Education  in  Ireland,   when  it  ceased  to  be  a 


94         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

violent  political  attack  on  the  spirit  of  the  people, 
(lid  so  in  order  to  take  on,  not  the  fair  colours  of 
nationality,  but  a  kind  of  dull  negative  hue.  The 
training-colleges,  through  which  the  teacliers  have 
to  pass  for  want  of  a  university  education,  do 
nothing  to  encourage  the  knowledge  and  spirit  of 
Ireland  in  those  whose  duty  it  Avill  one  day  be  to 
capture  the  imaginations  and  shape  the  minds  of 
Irish  children.  Consequently,  manned  by  teachers 
without  any  national  knowledge,  the  schools  have 
always  been  great  breeding-grounds  for  boy  clerk- 
ships in  the  British  Civil  Service.  'J'he  child  has 
never  been  trained  at  school  to  live  in  an  Irish 
h()in(!,  to  worlv  on  an  Irish  fiinii  or  in  an  Irish 
shop.  If  he  has  shown  any  signs  of  ability,  he 
has  generally  been  taught  to  despise  Ireland  as 
a  sphere  of  labour  for  so  promising  a  genius,  and 
to  set  his  heart  on  some  Government  position, 
tlie  salary  of  which  seems  princely  to  him  in  his 
narrow  home.  Too  many  fresh-faced  boys  have 
been  wasted  on  these  London  clcrkslups  to  allow 
such  dreams  of  wealth  to  mislead  the  people 
permanently,  and  both  teachers  and  parents  are 
beginning  to  know  that  a  boy  clerk's  wage  in 
London  is  not  a  living  wage,  and  that,  poor  as  it  is, 
it  may  be  brought  to  a  sudden  end  in  three  or  four 
years.  Consequently,  fewer  Irish  children  are  now 
sent  over  to  London  with  their  inci})ient  brains 
than  used  to  be.  Still,  the  bad  tradition  of  teach- 
ing remains,  and  the  Irish  boy  and  girl  are  for  the 
most  part  even  now  educated  on  the  supposition 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN         95 

that  they  have  not  a  country  of  their  own,  but 
will  one  day  emigrate.  One  of  the  arguments 
used  against  the  revival  of  the  Irish  language  was  : 
*•  What  use  will  it  be  to  anybody  outside  Ireland  ?  " 
As  though  every  language  did  not  first  grow  up, 
not  because  it  was  suited  for  use  in  foreign 
countries,  but  because  it  was  suited  for  use  in  the 
country  in  which  it  was  native  and  vital. 

I  myself,  who  was  brought  up  in  a  district  rich 
in  liistory  and  in  heroic  tales,  was  never  allowed 
to  know  at  school  a  single  human  fact  suggesting 
that  this  country  around  me  and  I  had  any  relation 
to  each  other — or  even,  indeed,  that  this  country 
existed,  except  in  the  geographical  sense.  Cuchul- 
lain,  the  hero  of  Ulster,  is  to  my  mind  one  of  the 
great  figures  in  the  world's  imaginative  literature. 
J  lis  story  is  as  woudciful  a,nd  varied  as  the  story 
of  Achilles,  a  thousand  times  more  wonderful  and 
varied  than  the  story  of  Hercules.  Yet  1,  living 
in  the  capital  of  Ulster,  was  taught  my  fair  share 
about  Achilles  and  Hercules,  but  heard  never  a 
word  about  Cuchullain.  Near  my  father's  house 
were  mounds  that  had  once  been  the  dwelling- 
places  of  Cuchullain's  comi)anions,  the  Knights 
of  the  Red  Branch,  but  my  father  had  been  told 
nothing  about  these  places,  and  so  he  could  com- 
municate none  of  their  mystery  to  me.  I  say  that 
it  is  an  evil  thing  to  let  all  this  beauty,  Ijeauty  of 
memory  and  imagination,  go  to  waste  and  not  use 
it  to  enrich  tlic  lives  of  Irisli  children.  History, 
again,  meant  to  mc,  just  as  literature  did,  some- 


96         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

thing  a])Out  anywhere  except  Irehmd.  AVe  had 
the  Hamiug  youth  of  Red  Ilugli  O'Donnell  at 
our  doors,  and  the  liumours  and  heroisms  of  the 
O'Neills,  and  the  passionate  drama  of  Wolfe  Tone, 
and  the  passionate  sacrificeof  Henry  Joy  ]\['Crackeu. 
Never,  however,  during  all  my  schooldays  do  I 
remember  hearing  a  single  intelligent  fact  stated 
in  regard  to  any  of  these  men  or  anybody  like 
them.  1  do  not  blame  my  teachers.  They,  too, 
were  brought  up  in  a  system  which  aimed  at 
educating  Irish  boys  and  girls  largely  by  ignoring 
their  own  country.  Some  of  them  were  un- 
surpassed teachers  on  their  own  lines,  but 
they  never  realised  that  the  object  of  Irish 
education  ought  to  be  to  produce  a  race  of  men 
and  women  who  would  be  useful  and  many- 
sided  citizens  of  Ireland. 

It  may  be  argued  that  Irish  education  is  no 
worse-off  than  English  in  this  respect,  and  that 
the  English  schools  lay  very  little  stress  on  history. 
The  case  is  different,  however.  The  English  child, 
at  least,  is  not  taught  to  ignoi'e  Waterloo  and 
Trafalgar  and  the  Armada  as  though  they  were 
shameful  things.  He  is  brought  up  in  the  idea 
that  his  is  a  country  to  be  proud  of.  The  trend  of 
Irish  education,  on  the  other  liand,  is  largely — or 
was  until  the  day  before  yesterday — to  convince  a 
child  that  his  is  a  country  of  which  to  be  ashamed. 
Sir  Horace  Plunkett  has  put  the  case  in  regard  to 
this  aspect  of  Irish  education  so  well  that  I  shall 
quote  a  few  of  his  sentences  and  so  anticipate  the 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN         97 

many  people  who  in  all  honesty  and  innocence  will 
accuse  me  of  exaorfferatiou.  "  The  national  factor 
in  Ireland,"  he  writes  in  "Ireland  in  the  New 
Century,"  "  has  been  studiously  eliminated  from 
national  education,  and  Ireland  isperha])s  the  only 
country  in  Europe  where  it  was  part  of  the  settled 
policy  of  those  who  had  the  guidance  of  education  to 
ignore  the  literature,  history,  arts,  and  tradition  of 
the  people.  It  was  a  fatal  policy,  for  it  obviously 
tended  to  stamp  their  native  country  in  the  eyes 
of  IrisJmien  with  the  ))adgc  of  inferioi-ity  and  to 
extinguish  the  sense  of  healthy  self-respect  which 
comes  from  the  consciousness  of  high  national 
ancestry  and  traditions.  This  policy,  rigidly 
adhered  to  for  many  years,  almost  extinguished 
native  (culture  a,ni()ng  Irishmen,  but  it  did  not 
succeed  in  m.'iking  another  form  of  culture  accept- 
able to  them.  It  (hilled  tiie  intelligence  of  the 
people,  impaired  their  interest  in  their  own 
surroundings,  stimulated  emigration  by  teaching 
them  to  look  on  other  countries  as  more  asreeable 
places  to  live  in,  and  made  Ireland  almost  a  social 
desert.  Men  and  women  without  culture  or 
knowledirc  of  literature  or  of  music  have  succeeded 
a  former  generation  who  were  passionately  in- 
terested in  these  things,  an  interest  which  extended 
down  even  to  the  wayside  cabin." 

I  do  not  think  you  coidd  damn  an  educational 
system  mucii  more  comprehensively  than  8ir 
Horace  Plunkett  damns  the  Irish  "  National " 
system  in  these  measured  words.      His  words  are 

G 


98         HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

true,  however,  not  only  of  the  National  Schools, 
but  of  almost  all  the  primary  schools  in  Ireland, 
except  some  of  those  belonging  to  the  Christian 
Brothers.  The  private  schools,  to  which  the  rich 
and  comfortable  send  their  children  in  the  towns, 
are  roomier  and  more  respectable  than  the  National 
Schools,  but  in  the  essentials  of  a  worthy  Irish 
educational  establishment  they  are  even  more 
miseral)ly  lacking.  Some  of  them  are  run  by  very 
able  ladies ;  some  of  them  are  run  by  very  silly 
ladies  ;  practically  all  of  them  are  run  by  ladies 
who  seem  never  to  have  heard  of  Ireland. 

As  for  the  secondary  schools,  it  is  not  an  ex- 
aggeration to  say  that  where  the  primary  schools 
have  chastised  the  country  with  whips,  the  second- 
ary schools  have  chastised  it  with  scorpions.  They 
have  been  absolutely  inefficient  in  accomplishing 
what  ouo-ht  to  have  been  their  sole  laroe  end — 
strengthening  the  character  and  affecting  the 
culture  of  Ireland.  As  the  secondary  schools — 
public  and  private — have  progressed,  the  country 
instead  of  appmaching  anytliing  in  the  shape 
of  culture  has  receded  further  and  further  away 
from  it.  These  schools  are  efficient  machines  for 
only  one  purpose — the  preparation  of  Ijoys  and 
girls  for  competitive  examinations,  ranging  from 
the  Intermediate  Board's  examinations  at  home  to 
the  examinations  for  the  English  Civil  Service. 
The  Intermediate  Exhibitions  are  well  worth  getting 
— they  amounted  to  from  £20  in  the  Preparatory 
Grade  to  £40  in  the  Senior  Grade  in  my  own  day 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN         99 

— and  Ireland  in  its  teens  makes  a  rusli  for  them 
to  the  exclusion  of  practically  every  other  intel- 
lectual interest.  In  the  result,  never  surely  were 
schools,  taught  by  able  masters  and  mistresses 
and  filled  with  clever  boys  and  girls,  so  barren  of 
use  or  beauty.  One  of  the  most  brilliant  educa- 
tionists in  Ireland  told  me  on  one  occasion  that 
nowhere  in  his  experience  had  he  found  a  higher 
level  of  intelligence  than  in  Ulster,  but  that,  owing 
to  the  lifeless  state  in  which  the  intellect  of  the 
people  had  be(;ii  left  by  the  schools  ajid  other 
provincial  forces,  it  was  useless,  in  his  opinion,  to 
look  for  any  good  thing  like  literature  from  that 
quarter  for  many  generations.  Now  literature  is 
by  no  means  everything,  or  even  the  chief  thing, 
in  this  world.  But  the  utter  absence  of  it  from  a 
country  shows  that  the  schools  of  that  country  are 
in  a  dangerous  condition. 

The  odd  thing  to  be  noted  in  this  connection 
is  that  the  Irish  secondary  schools,  if  they  were 
in  England,  would  be  excellent  institutions. 
Many  of  them  are  simply  good  things  in  the 
wrong  place.  Thus,  they  are  quite  unlike  the 
National  Schools,  which  are  often  bad  things 
in  the  wrong  place.  In  the  secondary  schools, 
if  you  take  the  trouble,  you  may  certainly  learn 
English  well,  you  may  learn  the  Classics  well, 
you  may  learn  physical  and  mathematical  science 
well,  you  may  sometimes  learn  even  French  and 
German  well.  The  worst  of  it  is,  you  are  taught 
everything  as  though  your  brain  were  a  fact-store 


100       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

— or  at  the  best  a  good-taste-store — instead  of 
a  livino-  thino-  to  be  used  for  the  building  and 
beautifying  of  the  world  within  the  Ijorders  of 
your  own  country  first  and  anywhere  else  you 
like  afterwards. 

Many  of  the  Irish  secondary  schools  are 
boarding-schools,  but  neither  the  boarding-schools 
nor  the  day-schools  have  many  points  of  com- 
parison with  the  more  famous  pul>lic  schools  of 
England.  For  one  thing,  the  boys  are  mostly 
the  sons  of  not  too  wealthy  parents,  and  the  need 
to  earn  a  living  is  so  pressing  that  comparatively 
few  of  them  stay  on  long  enough  to  enter  one  of 
the  professions  or  the  English  Civil  Service.  As 
a  result — or  as  one  of  the  results — Irish  Ijoys 
have  not  time  to  play  cricket  with  the  perfection 
common  among  English  boys,  though  they  some- 
times try.  Besides,  by  good  luck,  the  Irish  schools 
make  real  cricket-playing  impossible  by  rising 
for  the  holidays  at  the  end  of  June  and  remaining 
closed  till  the  beginning  of  September.  Again, 
Irish  school-boys  practically  never  wear  any 
distinctive  uniform — nothing  but  a  cap  with  the 
initials  of  their  school  sewn  on  it.  They  have 
a  pleasant  disordered  air  in  a  class-room,  some 
of  thcMu  sitting  about  in  their  overcoats,  others 
disdaining  such  trappings  of  weakness.  They 
are  an  eager,  quick,  conversational  crowd,  diliicult 
for  a  nervous  master  to  keep  in  hand.  People 
wha  have  taufijht  schools  both  in  England  and 
Ireland    tell    me    that,    after  having  been   accus- 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN       101 

tomed   to   Ireland,  the   decorum  of  English  chil- 
dren comes  upon  one  cas  a  shock.     When  I  read 
Mr  Kipling's  "Stalky  and  Co.,"  and  saw  it  de- 
nounced  as   being   quite  unlike   English    school- 
life,  I   felt  like  putting  in    a  claim  for  it    as    in 
some  measure  a  picture  of  Irish  school-life.     Mr 
Kipling's  unruly,  vigorous,  adventurous  boys  are 
not    unlike    Irish    boys.       Irish    boys,    however, 
are    much    less    sentimental    than    English    boys 
about  headmasters  or  indeed  any  masters,  or  about 
the    "old    school"    or    about    each    other.       Irish 
girls,    too,    gush    and    sentimentalise    over    their 
mistresses  to    a   much    less   degree    than    school- 
girls in  England.     Take  another  point.     Irish  boys 
of  all  ages  mix  with  each  other  much  more  freely 
than  boys  in  England  seem  to  do.     There  is  no 
"  cock-of-the-walking,"  on  the  one  hand,  and  no 
deepl)owing  to  authority,  on  the  other.     Priggish- 
uess  is  a  rare  vice  among  them,  and  so  is  bullying. 
Possibly,  fifty  per    cent,    of  them    or  so  do   not 
reverence  the  truth,  when  a  master  is  on  the  hunt 
for  it,  but  what  school-boys  do  ?     They  are  amon^ 
the  cleanest-minded   iK)ys    to   be   found,    I  should 
imagine.     At  the  school  at  which  I  was,  only  a 
disreputable  few  of  us    ever  aimed    at   anything 
like  Rabelaisianism  in    our  conversation,  and,  as 
for  vice  of  conduct,  it  was  hinted  at  by  hardly 
more  than  two  of  the  boys,  who  were  looked  on, 
one  tolerantly,  the  other  dislikingly,  as  bad  eggs. 
Schools  "nrv  a  great  deal  in  this  regard,  I  know, 
and  there  is  plenty  of  fdtli  spoken— I  once  had  a 


102       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

taste  for  it  myself — here  and  there  in  Ireland. 
From  all  I  have  heard,  liowever,  I  should  judge 
that  a  boy  at  school  has  a  better  chance  of  enjoy- 
iuof  a  clean  time  in  Ireland  than  in  most  countries. 
There  are  other  ways  of  demoralising  children 
besides  putting  them  in  immoral  company,  and 
the  Irish  schools  in  many  cases  tend  to  encourage 
the  most  dreary  form  of  snobbishness — wliaL  is 
called  "shoneenism."  This  is  said  to  l)e  especially 
true  of  some  of  the  Convent  schools,  which  aim 
at  making  lively-minded  Irish  girls  "  respectalde  " 
and  "more  English  than  the  English."  They 
teach  any  music  except  Irish  music,  any  language 
except  the  Irish  hmguage,  any  literature  except 
Irish  literature.  They  train  everything  except 
the  character,  tlie  body  and  the  intelligence. 
They  make  up  for  the  want  of  these  with  a 
plethora  of  "  accomplishments."  They  inculcate 
that  lowly  and  reverent  obedience  to  one's 
"betters"  which  still  keeps  alive  the  essentials 
of  the  slave  system  in  so  many  countries  nominally 
free.  They  praise  success,  and  one  feels  that,  if 
it  were  in  their  power  to  prevent  it,  there  would 
be  no  vivid  national  movement  in  Ireland.  This 
is,  of  course,  not  true  of  all  the  Convent  schools, 
but  it  is  true  of  enough  of  them  to  make  what 
I    have  said  fjiir   as  a  generalisation.      It  is   due 

o 

partly  to  the  fact  that  so  many  of  the  nuns  are 
foreigners,  who  do  not  realise  that  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  a  distinct  Irish  nation.  It  is  one  of 
the   anomalies    of    Irish    life    that    parents,     the 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN       103 

majority  of  whom  are  nominally  Nationalists, 
should  continue  to  send  their  daughters  to  these 
schools, 

I  know  of  one  school,  for  instance,  where  during 
the  i>of'r  War  the  children  were  encouraged  to 
W(>ar  liLII(>  Ihiion  -lacks  jmd  to  sing  "({od  save 
the  Queen  "  in  anticipation  of  a  visit  from  Queen 
Victoria.  One  of  the  girls  who  refused  to  surrender 
her  independence  even  to  keep  the  favour  of  her 
teachers,  appeared  in  class  one  day  with  a  Kruger 
button  instead  of  the  usual  British  symbol.  She 
was  ordered  to  take  it  off  at  once,  but  stoutly 
r(3fuscd.  She  was  tlir(?atened  with  all  sorts  of 
punishments,  but  still  she  held  out.  In  the  end, 
I  believe,  the  girl  went  home  and  remained  there 
till  the  lioyal  visit  was  over,  her  mother  declaring 
in  answer  (o  her  indignant  teachers  that  she 
wished  licr  daujj-liter  to  be  traijied  in  obedience 
and  good  manners,  but  not  in  loyalty  to  foreign 
rule.  From  a  Unionist  point  of  view,  the  nuns 
may  seem  to  have  been  justified  in  their  attitude 
all  through.  Consider,  on  the  other  hand,  what 
this  attitude  meant  in  Ireland.  Jt  meant  that  the 
children  were  quietly  having  wrung  out  of  them 
all  the  ideals  which  were  in  the  atmosphere  of 
their  homes.  It  meant  that  the  gentle  and  un- 
selfisli  ideal  of  a  nation  was  being  deliberately 
displaced  by  the  ideal  of  bigness  and  success  and 
worldly  power.  Need  I  say  again,  that  I  do  not 
wish  all  the  Convent  schools  of  Ireland  to  be  taken 
as  included  in  this  indictment  ?     Some  of   these 


104       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

schools  do  all  in  their  [)0wcr  to  licconic  a  real 
educational  force  in  the  life  of  the  Irish  nation. 

It  may  be  doubted,  however,  whether  on  the 
wdiole  the  influence  of  the  religious  schools  on 
Irish  life  is  a  healthy  one.  I  say  this,  of  course, 
not  because  the  schools  make  the  children  too 
religious,  but  because  they  make  them  too  "  re- 
fined," in  the  sense  that  they  unfit  them  for  the 
mixed  surroundings  to  which  they  are  accustomed 
at  home.  A  farmer's  daughter  who  has  been 
educated  at  a  Convent,  sometimes  loses  all  taste 
for  settling  down  on  a  farm.  Iter  education  has 
trained  her,  not  to  be  a  good  farmer's  wife,  but 
to  be  an  amiable  ornament  in  the  drawing-room. 
She  bclonirH  to  a  dill'iirent  woi'ld  IVom  li(;r  soil- 
stained  father  and  his  neighbours  and  his  neigh- 
bours' sons.  The  horror  of  their  home-life,  in  its 
carelessness  of  the  niceties,  its  very  earthy  un- 
reiinement,  has  undoubtedly  driven  many  Irish 
girls  into  the  nunneries  for  a  refuge.  Catholic 
parents  tell  you  of  these  things  and  speak  com- 
plainingly  of  the  spread  of  the  educational  religious 
orders,  but  still  they  send  their  chilcb'cn  to  the 
religious  schools,  for  they  are  commonly  the  best 
to  be  had  in  the  district.  Teachers  in  the  ordinary 
schools  also  complain.  They  say  that  it  does  not 
pay  a  teacher  to  work  up  a  school  to  a  ]ioint  of 
too  great  excellence,  for,  if  he  does,  the  religious 
orders  come  in  and  establish  another  school,  and 
take  away  his  pupils  from  him. 

The   spread  of  the   religious  orders   is  one  of 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN       105 

the  most  remarkable  phenomena  of  our  time. 
In  Louoliglynn,  in  tlie  County  of  Roscommon, 
the  Franciscan  nuns  are  now  in  possession  of  Lord 
Dillon's  great  mansion  and  grounds,  but  1  believe 
tlie  inlkicncc  of  these  hidies  on  the  district  in 
which  they  have  settled  is  a  good  one.  In 
Nenagh,  in  County  Tipperary,  the  nuns  have 
found  a  still  stranger  home,  for  there  they  occupy 
the  old  gaol,  and  the  statue  of  the  Virgin  now 
stands  over  the  porch  where  two  innocent  men 
were  brought  out  and  hanged  a  good  many  years 
ago — the  last  public  hanging  that  took  place  in 
Nenagh.  It  is  said,  by  the  way,  that  ruin  came 
upon  the  house  of  every  member  of  the  jury,  who 
were  stupefied  by  drink  into  condemning  those 
innocent  men,  some  of  them  going  mad,  some 
dyiuo'  iti  drink  and  poverty,  some  of  horrible 
dis('ji,H(\s.  l*co|»le  l-ell  you,  furtlier,  tliiit  when  th(i 
authorities  had  a  lamp  put  outside  the  gaol  at 
the  place  of  hanging,  it  flickered  and  went  out, 
and,  no  matter  what  they  did  or  how  calm  the 
evening  was,  it  would  still  go  out  in  the  most 
ghostly  way.  It  was  thought  that  the  troubled 
spirits  of  the  dead  moved  about  there,  disturbing 
the  scene  of  their  great  wrong.  Since  the  nuns 
came,  however,  the  lamp  has  begun  to  burn 
brightly  and  the  ghosts  trouble  the  place  no 
more. 

Now  that  I  have  had  my  bad  say  about  a  great 
deal  in  modern  Irish  education,  let  me  add  that 
there   are   signs  of  a  new  life — to  use  a  phrase 


106       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

that  is  becoming  tlireadljare — spriiioing  up  in  the 
country  and  especially  in  the  elementary  scliools. 
Education  is  now  bi-lingual  in  many  of  the  dis- 
tricts where  the  children  speak  Irish/  though 
sometimes  a  lazy  teacher  hides  the  fact  that  his 
pupils  are  Irish-speaking  in  order  that  he  may 
continue  along  the  old,  useless,  indolent  paths.  In 
schools  outside  these  districts,  l)i-lingual  education 
is  still  forbidden,  and  teachers  are  not  encouraged 
too  strongly  to  make  Irish  one  of  the  ordinary 
subjects  of  study.  Sometimes,  too,  the  teacher 
knows  no  Irish.  The  Gaelic  League  provides  a 
certain  number  of  travelling  teac^liers,  who  go 
about  from  si-hool  to  school  on  bi(^ycles  and  give 
we(;kly  or  bi-weekly  lessons  in  Irish  to  the 
children.  The  ordinary  teaciiers  themselves  some- 
times help  the  language  forward  by  teaching 
Irish  songs  during  the  singing  lesson,  though  I 
was  horrified  on  one  occasion,  when  I  asked  a 
child  ior  a  song  in  a  very  Irish  district,  and  she 
broke  out  with  "  I  never  loved  a  dear  gazelle." 
I  suppose  Ireland  is  the  only  part  of  the  civilised 

1  The  bi-liiigual  programme  is  now  (1909)  in  force  in  174  schools 
as  compared  with  12G  last  year. 

Fees  were  paid  for  Irish  as  an  extra  suliject  in  the  year  1908  in 
1507  national  Kchools,  4n,0()()  hcing  tlie  numher  of  pu[)ils  in  average 
attendance  for  whom  fees  were  paid.  The  fees  amounted  to 
£10,227,  16s.  8d. 

The  number  of  pupils  who  were  receiving  instruction  in  Irish 
as  an  optional  subject  on  December  31st,  1908,  was  56,800 
approximately. 

There  were  385  evening  schools  opened  for  the  190S-9  session. 

Irish  was  tau'dit  in  185  of  these  evening  schools. 


SCHOOLS  7\NJ)  CHILDREN       107 

world  where  anyone  would  sing  a  song  like  that 
nowadays. 

Tlie  school-books  in  general  are  becoming  more 
Irish  than  they  used  to  be.  Nationality  is  as  yet 
permitted  only  in  moderate  doses,  but  the  great 
thing  is  that  it  sliould  be  permitted  at  all.  It 
has  not  yet  made  as  great  progress  in  the  secondary 
as  in  the  elementary  schools.  Even  there,  how- 
ever, I  hear  Irish  history  is  being  taught  much 
less  contemptuously  than  it  used  to  be.  Of  late, 
too,  we  have  had  fine  prospects  opened  out  by 
the  way  in  whicli  important  girls'  schools  like 
Alexandra  College  in  Dublin — one  of  the  prin(npal 
Protestant  schools  in  the  country — have  shown  an 
inclination  to  play  a  significant  part  in  the  life  of 
Ireland.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that  last  year  a 
Catholic  boys'  school,  St  Enda's,  was  opened  in 
])ul)lin  as  an  institution  int(!ndcd  to  be  as  Irisii 
as  Eton  or  tlie  City  of  London  School  is  EngHsh. 

St  Enda's,  comfortably  set  in  a  beautiful  garden, 
is  the  fruit  of  a  passionate  enthusiasm.  It  is  an 
effort  to  accomplish  the  dream  of  the  headmaster, 
Mr  P.  H.  Pearse,  a  barrister,  a  scholar,  and  the 
editor  of  ^?i  Claidhcamh  Soluis,  the  official  journal 
of  the  Gaelic  League.  In  the  hall  as  one  enters 
one  is  faced  by  a  lunette  representing  Cuchullain  at 
the  heroic  feats  of  his  boyhood.  In  another  room 
are  pictures  by  Mr  George  Russell  (A.  E.),  Mr 
Jack  Yeats,  and  others.  High  on  the  walls  of  the 
princii)al  class-room  is  a  line  of  the  names  of  the 
great  heroes  of  Ireland,  coming  down  to  Wolfe 


108       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

Tone  and  Robert  Emmet  and  Thomas  Davis. 
The  teacliing  is  carried  on  partly  in  Irish  and 
partly  in  English.  When  I  visited  the  school 
during  the  past  spring  a  class  was  in  progress  in 
which  a  lesson  in  Irish  phonetics  was  being  given 
first  in  Irish,  then  in  English.  The  English 
classes,  of  course,  are  carried  on  through  the 
medium  of  English,  the  French  through  the 
medium  of  French,  and  so  forth,  but  liistory, 
geography,  science,  and  similar  subjects  are  taught 
now  in  the  one  language  and  now  in  the  other. 
Everybody  in  the  establishment  is  an  Irish-speaker 
except  the  cook.  The  gardener  is  an  especially 
useful  person,  as  in  the  liours  devoted  to  nature 
study  he  can  be  turned  into  a  familiar  teacher 
and  give  easy  lessons  in  the  Irish  names  of  the 
flowers  and  the  trees.  Of  course,  there  is  a 
playing-ground  where  Irish  games,  like  hurling 
and  ()!aelic  football  arc;  played,  and  there  is  also  a 
ball-alley — aji  essentially  Irish  thing  to  be  found 
in  even  the  most  anti-lrisli  schools  in  the  country. 
Tennis  is  played  by  the  boys  dui-ing  summer.  A 
good  many  of  the  pupils  wear  the  Irish  kilt — a 
comely  costume,  though  there  are  still  some  of 
us  who  thank  God  we  liave  trousers  in  the  tubes 
of  which  to  hide  our  crooked  limbs.  1  liave  said 
enough,  I  think,  to  give  an  idea  of  the  Irish 
atmosphere  of  this  pioneer  school.  It  is  likely 
before  long  to  have  a  good  many  imitators — 
especially  on  that  day,  sure  to  come  at  last,  when 
the  new  National  University  will  make  Irish  an 


SCHOOLS  AND  CHILDREN       109 

essential  subject  for  raatriculatiou  and  so  force 
the  secondary  schools  to  give  it  a  prominent  place 
in  their  curricula. 

Irish  education,  however,  will  never  be  in  a  satis- 
factory condition  until  the  Irish  people  have  taken 
it  laroely  into  their  own  hands.  That  the  British 
Government  is  not  fit  to  control  it  is  proved,  if  by 
nothing  else,  by  the  way  in  which  they  consider 
it  less  important  than  the  policing  of  the  country. 
In  Scotland,  as  Mr  Barry  O'Brien  points  out  in 
"  Dublin  Castle  and  the  Irish  People,"  the  cost 
per  head  of  the  population  is  2s.  Gd.  for  Police  and 
8s.  8d.  for  Education.  In  Ireland  it  is  6s.  7d. 
for  Police  and  6s.  6d.  for  Education.  This  shows 
how  thoroughly  necessary  it  is  that  the  Irish 
people  should  take  over  the  control  of  the  secnlar 
part  of  it,  and  put  an  end  to  a  state  of  aflairs 
which  ncillior  the  liiitish  Covernnient  nor  the 
clergy  as  a  whole  ^  show  any  mind  to  remedy. 

1  A  Bill  v,-Rs  recently  introduced  by  Mr  Craig,  M.P.,  in  the 
English  Parliament,  to  throw  a  portion  of  the  school  expenses  on 
the  local  rates,  and  the  Central  Council  of  the  Irish  Clerical 
Managei's  has  passed  a  resolution  in  opposition  to  it.  This  body, 
however,  oflers  to  make  the  managers  responsible  for  half  the 
expenses  of  heating,  cleansing,  and  the  sanitation  of  schools,  the 
Treasury  supplying  the  other  half. 


CHAPTER   VI 

WAKES    AND    FUNERALS 

No  Irish  custom,  I  suppose,  is  more  famous  than 
that  of  "waking"  the  dead.  The  custom  goes 
back  to  pagan  times,  when  we  are  tokl  great 
persons  were  usually  waked  for  seven  nights  and 
days.  The  introduction  of  Christianity  seems  to 
have  lengthened  the  ceremonies,  for  St  Patrick's 
wake  lasted  twelve  nights,  during  which  lights 
were  kept  burning  and,  as  Dr  Joyce  reminds  us, 
"night  was  made  like  day  with  the  blaze  of 
torches." 

The  modern  wake  seems  to  be  Init  a  pale 
reflection,  a  bewildered  memory,  of  the  ceremonies 
which  used  to  follow  a  deatli  till  about  a  hundred 
years  ago.  In  the  old  days,  according  to  an 
account  preserved  by  Lady  Wilde,  the  room  or 
barn  in  which  the  dead  body  lay  was  hung  with 
"  branches  of  evergreen  and  festoons  of  laurel  and 
holly."  On  a  bed  lay  the  corpse,  surrounded  by 
branches  of  green  leaves.  The  mourning  women 
came  in  and  sat  down  on  the  i>round  in  a  circle. 
In  the  centre  one  of  them,  cloaked  and  hooded, 
began  the  funeral  wail,  the  others  joining  in  the 
chorus.  The  lament  ceased  at  intervals  only  to 
no 


AYAKES  AND  FUNERALS         111 

be  raised  again,  and,  when  it  was  over,  the  women 
went  out,  and  their  places  were  taken  by  a  new 
crowd  of  people  who  performed  a  kind  of  mystery 
play.  Before  the  play  began,  there  was  pipe- 
music,  and  whiskey  was  served  round.  With 
i'('sp(H'.t  to  tlic  [)l''iys  acted  on  these  occasions,  some 
of  them  appear  to  have  been  serious  and  symbolic. 
Others  contained  farcical  elements  like  the  mystery 
plays  in  all  Christian  countries  during  the  middle 
ages.  We  hear,  for  instance,  of  "  one  called  '  Hold 
the  liglit,'  wliere  tlie  passion  of  tlie  Lord  Christ 
is  travestied  with  grotesque  imitation."  Many  of 
them  were  full  of  sarcastic  references  to  Christianity 
— references  which  are  to  be  found  also  in  tradi- 
tional Irish  literature — and  the  priests  fought  hard 
to  put  an  end  to  these  irreverent  relics  of  the 
pagan  spirit.  As  regards  the  effectiveness  of 
some  of  these  old  dramas.  Lady  Wilde  r(;[)eats  an 
interesting  criticism  of  an  "intelligent  peasant" 
who  had  been  to  Dublin  and  had  been  taken  to 
the  theatre.  "  I  have  now,"  he  said  on  his  return, 
"  seen  the  great  English  actors,  and  heard  plays 
in  the  English  tongue,  but  })oor  and  dull  they 
seemed  to  me  after  the  acting  of  our  own  people 
at  the  wakes  and  fairs  :  for  it  is  a  truth,  the 
English  cannot  make  us  weep  and  laugh  as  I  have 
seen  the  crowds  with  us  when  the  players  played 
and  the  poets  recited  their  stories." 

While  on  the  subject  of  the  old  funeral  customs, 
it  may  be  of  interest  to  note  that  some  of  them 
at    least    were   common    both    to    Catholic    and 


112       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

Protestant  Ireland.  When  John  Wesley  was  in 
Ireland  in  1750,  he  preached  at  a  burial  service, 
and  was  greatly  shocked  by  the  "  Irish  liowl " 
which  followed.  This  was  the  "  dismal  inarticulate 
yell"  of  the  four  mourning  women  who  were 
hired  to  stand  by  the  grave  and  raise  tlie  lament. 
"  But  I  saw  not  one  that  shed  a  tear,"  comments 
Wesley;  "for  that,  it  seems,  was  not  in  their 
bargain." 

Wakes  are  sullicicntly  common  both  in  Catholic 
and  Protestant  Ireland  to-day,  but  they  are  fast 
becoming  a  discredited  institution.  In  many 
dioceses  the  Catholic  Bishops  have  absolutely 
forbidden  them.  The  priests  sometimes  go  so  far 
as  to  threaten  to  withhold  the  rites  of  Christian 
burial  if  the  wake  is  not  dispensed  with.  Tlie 
reason  of  this  is,  of  course,  not  that  the  wake  is 
a  relic  of  paganism,  but  that  it  is  apt  to  cause  an 
excessive  amount  of  drinking  and  extravagance. 
As  a  result  of  the  determined  attitude  of  the 
clergy,  wakes  are  now  practically  unknown  in 
some  parts  of  the  country.  When  a  man  dies, 
his  body  is  almost  at  once  put  into  the  coffin  and 
carried  off  to  the  chapel,  where  it  remains  till  the 
day  of  the  funeral.  If  he  dies  early  in  tlie 
morning,  liis  body  may  be  removed  to  the  cha])el 
towards  the  evening  of  the  same  day.  If  lie  dies 
in  the  evening,  the  collin  is  taken  to  the  cliurch 
on  the  following  morning.  Thus  he  lias  a  sort 
of  double  funeral. 

I  saw  the  first  part  of  a  funeral  like  this  when 


WAKES  AND  FUNERALS         113 

I  was  in  a  town  in  County  Tipperary  some  time 
ago.  Every  sliop  in  the  place  had  half  the 
shutters  up  an  liour  or  two  in  advance,  out  of 
respect  to  the  funeral  procession  that  was  to  pass 
along  the  streets.  The  dead  man  was  a  man  with- 
out note,  yet  a  great  number  of  the  townspeople, 
includiufT  some  women,  turned  out  to  walk  after 
the  hearse.  Tlie  coffin  was  left  in  a  corner  of 
the  church  near  the  door,  and  most  of  those  who 
had  followed  it  went  into  the  church  to  say  a 
prayer  before  returning  home.  It  was  as  silent  a 
ceremony  as  you  could  imagine. 

Compare  with  this  the  wakes  that  still  survive 
in  many  parts  of  Ireland.  Nowhere,  I  imagine, 
is  their  traditional  form  preserved  more  fully  than 
in  Conncmara.  Here,  as  Mr  W.  P.  Ryan  tells  us, 
"the  elders  sit  by  the  fire  and  tell  stories  of  the 
Fianna  ;  the  youn(:;er  folk,  the  girls  at  one  side, 
the  boys  at  the  other,  sit  in  rows  on  the  straw- 
strewn  floor ;  the  corpse  very  often  lies  on  a 
table  in  the  centre  of  the  room  or  kitchen." 
About  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  poteen — the  poison- 
ous watery-looking  whiskey  which  is  still  manu- 
factured secretly  in  some  parts  of  Ireland — is 
served  out  to  all  present.  At  midnigiit  the  first 
keen  over  the  dead  is  raised — the  sgread  na 
maidne,  or  morning  cry,  as  it  is  called,  "  which 
no  one  who  has  heard  it  in  Connacht  is  likely  to 
forget."  The  keen  is  repeated  at  intervals  till 
the  burial  takes  place.  At  about  three  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  the  poteen  goes  round  again,  and 

H 


114       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

this,  like  the  keen,  is  repeated  at  intervals  till  the 
time  of  burial. 

The  professional  story-tellers  used  to  be  an  in- 
dispensable feature  in  an  Irish  wake,  and  the  old 
men  of  Connemara  telling  their  Fenian  tales  are 
their  true  heirs.  Story-telling,  indeed,  seems  to 
be  an  essential  part  of  the  wake  all  over  Ireland, 
but  the  stories  in  most  places  now  are  not 
necessarily  on  the  old  lieroic  themes,  Imt  arc  as 
likely  to  be  concerned  with  the  good  deeds  of  the 
dead  man  or  woman  as  with  the  l^rave  and  beauti- 
ful people  of  the  legends.  Songs,  too,  are  raised 
from  time  to  time,  and  there  is  occasionally  a 
good  d(;ul  of  di'inkiiig,  for  cverybo(]y  is  welcome 
at  a  wake,  and  it  is  a  point  of  lionour  with  the 
relatives  of  tlie  dead  to  show  hospitality  to  all. 
Formerly,  when  a  member  of  any  prominent 
family  died,  people  would  come  to  the  wake  from 
all  quarters,  the  worthless  with  the  worthy,  and 
occasionally  tlicse  indiscriminate  gatherings  had 
the  appearance  of  something  like  a  debauch.  It 
is  a  mistake,  however,  to  think  that  a  wake  always 
degenerates  into  an  orgy.  The  man  who  is  drunk 
at  a  wake  is  very  often  a  man  who  has  been 
drunk,  or  nearly  so,  before  he  came  in.  Young 
men,  knowing  they  are  going  to  liavc  a  late 
sitting,  are  inclined  to  prepare  for  it  by  a  visit  to 
a  public-house  on  the  way.  The  ordinary  man 
who  assists  at  a  wake  is  as  sober  as  the  ordinary 
man  who  assists  at  a  wedding. 

In  some  parts  of  the  country  where  the  wake 


WAKES  AND  FUNERALS         115 

still  survives,  the  sittiug-up  lias  come  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  kind  of"  excitement  for  the  young  men. 
The  older  men  do  not  believe  in  losing  their  sleep 
for  it,  and  only  turn  in  to  pay  their  respects  to 
the  dead  mail's  family  for  a  few  minutes  before 
going  to  work  in  the  morning,  or  at  some  other 
time, 

Protestant  wakes,  especially,  are  coming  more 
and  more  to  be  recognised  as  excitements  for 
the  young.  Near  a  watering-place  in  the  north 
of  Ireland  is  an  island  inhabited  by  some  Pro- 
testant farmers  and  their  families.  Recently,  there 
was  a  death  on  the  island,  and  many  young 
holiday-makers  from  the  mainland  joined  in  the 
wake  that  followed.  On  the  day  of  the  funeral 
the  colfin  was  brought  over  to  the  mainland  on 
a  boat,  and  the  boats  of  the  fishermen  of  the 
place  followed  it  like  carringcs  at  a  funeral. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  wakes  are  not  un- 
common .among  the  working  people  of  Belfast, 
Protestant  as  well  as  Catholic.  As  often  as  not, 
the  music  on  these  occasions  is  of  the  Moody- 
and-Sankey  order.  Whiskey  is  served  round  hos- 
pitably, and  one  hears  of  a  good  deal  of  court- 
ing going  on  among  the  young  people  in  the 
background. 

When  a  man  dies  in  an  Irish  countryside,  all 
the  neighbourhood  unites  to  do  him  honour.  In 
some  parts  of  Ulster  a  mourning  card  is  at  once 
printed  oft',  with  a  deep  black  border,  and  sent 
round  the  neighbours  to  inform  them  of  the  day 


116       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  tlie  funeral.  Before  the  funeral,  every  one 
Hocks  to  the  house,  witli  its  piece  of  crepe  on  the 
knocker,  if  there  is  a  knoctkcr,  and  those  wlio 
have  not  already  seen  the  corpse  no\s'  go  into  the 
room  where  it  is  lying  and  offer  some  remark  of 
praise.  In  some  of  the  Catholic  districts  of  Ire- 
land a  collection  is  made  for  the  priest  on  the  day 
of  the  funeral.  Writing  of  this  with  special  re- 
ference to  Connemara,  Mr  Ryan  says,  "  These 
collections  are  curiously  styled  '  altars.'  The  P.P., 
or  the  P.P.  and  curate,  stand  near  the  table,  and 
every  one  attending  the  funeral  is  expected  to 
come  u[)  and  conliibute.  Tliis  has  come  to  he  a 
source  of  considerable  hardship  in  Connemara, 
especially  on  the  very  poor — to  [)rovide  even  a 
shilling  is  naturally  a  strain  vcsry  often  on  a  poor 
man  in  a  Conuacht  nook  or  village,  and  in  point 
of  fact  in  order  to  be  able  to  furnish  the  contribu- 
tions the  villagers  and  country  folk  have  often  to 
trudge  to  the  towns  and  sell  something  or  other. 
No  neighbour  with  any  respect  for  the  departed, 
or  the  friends  of  the  departed,  will  dream  of  stay- 
ing away  from  the  funeral,  and  to  the  collection 
everybody,  fearing  the  charge  of  meanness,  and 
the  public  opinion  which  is  terrible  and  subtle  in 
villages  and  country  places,  must  be  sure  to 
contribute." 

Recently,  according  to  the  same  writer,  a  sen- 
sational incident  occurred  in  Connemara  in  con- 
nection with  the  "altar."  Tlie  wake  seems  to 
have  been  something  of  an   orgy,   for   when   the 


WAKES  AND  FUNEUAI.S         117 

moucy  collected  was  handed  to  a  young  curate 
who  was  present  he  threw  it  down  in  disgust, 
saying  in  Irish  that  it  was  the  price  of  devilry. 
The  Parish  Priest  came  forward  and — in  Irish, 
too,  of  course — told  the  people  not  to  mind  the 
curate,  for  he  was  here  to-day  and  would  be  gone 
to-morrow,  and  did  not  understand  the  question. 
Both  priest  and  curate  ultimately  went  to  the 
Archbishop  with  reference  to  the  incident,  and  it 
is  hinted  that  the  Arclibishop  took  tlie  curate's 
side.  It  is  cerLaiiily  a  fine  thing  that  a  number 
of  the  young  clergy  are  trying  to  put  an  end  to 
the  "altars."  I  wonder,  however,  whether  the 
"  altars  "  and  the  poteen  are  so  intimately  related 
as  Mr  Ryan  contends  they  are.  Even  in  parts  of 
tlie  (iountry  where  there  is  neither  wake  nor  free 
drinking,  these  collections  in  the  house  of  the 
dead  are  fretjuently  made. 

Coming  to  the  funeral  ceremony  itself,  one  may 
say  that  customs  vary  in  different  parts  of  the 
country.  In  some  places,  the  hearse  is  followed 
to  the  grave  by  men  only :  elsewhere  women 
form  a  part  of  the  procession.  In  the  greater  part 
of  Ulster  women  stay  in  the  house  of  mourning, 
condoling  with  each  other,  while  the  men  are  at 
the  funeral,  though  among  the  working-classes  in 
the  towns  it  is  common  for  the  women  to  follow 
tlie  coffin  to  tlie  grave.  In  the  Aran  Islands,  as 
every  one  who  has  read  J.  M.  Synge's  account  of 
them  will  remember,  women  are  an  essential  part 
of  the  procession.     Mr  Synge,  describing  an  Aran 


118       HOME  LIFE  IN  lUELAND 

funeral,  tells  how,  as  the  coffin,  sewn  loosely  in 
sailcloth,  was  carried  clown  to  the  graveyard, 
*'  nearly  all  the  men,  and  all  the  oldest  women, 
wearing  petticoats  over  their  heads,  came  out  and 
joined  in  the  procession."  When  they  reached 
the  graveyard,  the  women  sat  down  among  the 
flat  tombstones  and  began  keening  for  the  dead. 
"Each  old  woman,  as  she  took  her  turn  in  the 
leading  recitative,  seemed  possessed  for  the  moment 
with  a  profound  ecstasy  of  grief,  swaying  to  and 
fro,  and  bending  her  foreliead  to  the  stone  before 
her,  while  she  called  out  to  the  dead  with  a  per- 
petually recurring  chant  of  sobs.  All  round  the 
graveyard  other  wrinkled  women  looking  out  from 
under  the  deep  red  petticoats  that  cloaked  them, 
rocked  themselves  with  the  same  rhythm,  and  in- 
toned the  inarticulate  chant  that  is  sustained  by  all 
as  an  accompaniment."  This  crying  for  the  dead 
is  not  always  confined  to  the  day  of  the  funeral. 
There  are  ])arts  of  the  country  in  which,  after 
Mass  on  a  Suinhiy,  you  will  Hv.a  tlie  women  sway- 
ing and  sobbing  over  their  dead  in  the  chapel 
graveyard  as  though  they  had  lost  them  the  day 
before. 

It  is  the  custom  in  most  places  for  the  friends 
of  the  dead  to  carry  the  coffin  on  their  shoulders 
a  part  of  the  way,  the  hearse  moving  slowly  in 
front.  Sometimes,  it  is  the  rule  to  give  every 
pair  of  bearers  a  turn  at  each  end  of  the  coffin. 
In  Dublin,  1  believe,  funerals  going  through  the 
city  are  compelled  by  a  bye-law  to  move  at  a 


■'•■-■  f  Ms; 


WAKES  AND  FUNERALS         119 

brisk  trot — a  thing  which  startled  me  the  first 
time  I  saw  it,  for  iu  Belfast  funerals  move  at  a 
suail's  pace  through  the  most  crowded  traflic. 
Funerals  in  town  generally  take  place  in  the 
morning,  in  order  that  business  people  may  not  be 
put  to  too  great  inconvenience  in  attending  them. 
1  used  to  have  something  like  a  passion  for 
going  to  funerals — not  an  uncommon  taste  iu  the 
country — and  I  was  often  struck  by  the  pliilosopliic 
way  in  whicli  tlie  ])oorcr  people  seemed  to  accept 
the  (h\'ilh  of  the  ohl.  I  ;itt(>ii(l('(l  one  country 
fiUK'iiiJ  \vh('i(!  the  gr(>\vn-ii|)  sons  of  the  (hiad  man 
smoked  Ihcii-  [)i[)('s  sU^adily  as  they  walked  after 
the  hearse.  An  Ulster  country  funeral,  indeed, 
has  an  air  of  stoical  resignation,  of  grim  fatalism. 
Every  farmer  in  the  neighbourhood  goes  to  it,  or 
sends  his  car,  or  his  polo-cart,  and  it  is  a  common 
thing  for  cars  that  meet  the  procession  on  the 
road  to  turn  and  follow  it.  While  it  is  going  by, 
the  driver  of  the  car  always  pulls  in  towards  the 
ditch,  and  remains  there  with  his  raised  hat  almost 
hiding  his  inquisitive  eyes  till  the  front  part  has 
gone  past.  Arrived  at  the  grave,  when  the  colTin 
has  been  committed  to  the  ground,  some  of  the 
young  men  present  will  occasionally  take  a  spade 
and  help  the  grave-digger  to  fill  in  the  earth.  I 
remember  one  day  1  had  driven  with  a  friend 
some  two  miles  to  a  funeral,  and  after  the  service 
we  were  about  to  drive  off  again,  when  we  heard 
a  loud  whistle.  Looking  over  the  wall  of  the 
graveyard,    we  saw   a  young   countryman   at   the 


120       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

graveside  gesticulating  and  calling  on  us  to  stop, 
and,  as  we  waited  for  him,  lie  Hung  down  the 
spade  that  he  had  been  using  and  ran  over  the 
graves  to  us.  He  lived  in  the  same  district  as 
ourselves,  and  did  not  fancy  the  idea  of  walking 
home  when  he  could  Q-et  a  drive.  I  never  saw  so 
practical  a  man,  so  cool  a  disregarder  of  the  con- 
ventions, in  a  graveyard  Ijcfore  or  since. 

Before  leaving  the  sultjcct  of  wakes  and  funerals, 
it  may  be  worth  noting  that  another  kind  of  wake 
is  common  in  Ireland  besides  the  wake  of  the 
dead.  This  is  known  as  the  American  wake,  and 
is  held  in  the  west  in  honour  of  those  who  are 
emi<jfratino;  to  America.  It  is  a  strano-e  mixture 
of  dancino-  and  sudden  lamentation  which  continues 
all  through  the  night  till  morning.  It  is  not 
without  sionificance  that  so  funereal  a  name  should 
be  given  to  these  emigration  ceremonies,  for  the 
Irish  emigrant  is  not  the  personification  of  national 
adventure,  but  of  something  that  has  the  appear- 
ance of  national  doom.  "^Po  be  in  a  Oonnemara 
station  when  emigrants  are  going  olF  by  the  train 
is  one  of  the  most  torturing  experiences  that  1 
know.  When  it  is  a  girl  that  is  going  off,  she  is 
almost  carried  along  the  ]»latforni  in  the  arms  of 
her  male  relatives,  and  the  sliiill  hiniciit  (h;U  she 
raises  as  the  train  comes  in  is  as  teiriblc  as  tlumgh 
she  were  keeniuG:  her  dead.  As  she  hanos  from 
the  railway-carriage  kissing  the  men  of  her  family 
good-bye,  it  seems  as  though  they  were  fighting 
to  hold  her  back  among  them,  and  the  railway- 


WAKES  AND  FUNERALS         121 

porters  have  to  struggle  with  them  as  the  train 
moves  out  to  keep  them  from  being  dragged 
away.  Sometimes,  the  lamenting  girl  seems  to 
lose  her  grief  as  suddenly  as  she  found  it,  and  as 
she  arrives  at  vai'ious  railway  stations  slie  leans 
out  of  tlie  window  to  see  if  there  arc  any  friendly 
faces  about  whicli  will  be  wakened  into  interest 
by  her  momentary  tragedy.  After  all,  the  worst 
tragedy  of  Irish  emigration  is  not  the  tragedy  of 
hopeful  youth,  but  the  tragedy  of  the  old  people 
who  are  left.  The  tragedy  of  youth  occurs 
amid  tlie  disillusiouments  of  the  big  cities  of 
America, 

I  heard  recently  of  yet  a  third  kind  of  wake 
which  took  place  in  a  town  in  County  Tipperary. 
A  young  Protestant  fell  in  love  with  a  Catholic 
girl,  and  clianged  his  religion  in  order  to  marry 
her.  lie  was  his  mother's  only  soji,  and,  wlieu  he 
left  both  her  and  her  religion,  she  pulled  down 
the  blinds  of  the  house  and  waked  him  for  two 
nights  and  two  days  as  though  he  were  dead. 
And  dead  he  is  to  her,  for  change  of  creed  is  not 
easily  forgiven.  One  is  sometimes  told  that  there 
is  no  dramatic  interest  in  the  life  of  the  people  of 
modern  Ireland,  because  there  is  so  rigid  a  sup- 
pression of  the  emotions  of  sex.  Only  a  person 
whose  mind  was  monopolised  by  the  sexual  side 
of  life,  however,  could  believe  this. 


CHAPTER  VII 

PRIESTS    AND    PARSONS 

The  Irish  priest  is  the  most  difficult  of  all  subjects 
for  any  one  writing  about  Ireland.  It  is  easy 
enough  to  make  generalisations  about  him  and 
even  to  believe  them.  But  to  see  him  fairly  as  a 
human  being,  to  appreciate  his  virtues  and  to 
understand  his  faults  and  tlie  cause  of  them,  would 
inv(»lve  a  know]edg(;,  an  imagination,  and  a  sense 
of  justice  such  as  have  been  united  in  no  writer 
of  Irish  critical  books  that  I  can  remember. 
Emphatically,  I  am  not  the  person  who  can  fill 
this  gap  of  perfectness.  For  one  tiling,  I  was 
reared  a  rresl)yterian,  as  they  say  iu  Ulster,  and 
priests  are  not  an  essential  part  of  the  colour  of 
my  life  as  they  are  of  the  life  of  an  Irish  Catholic. 
The  attitude  of  many  of  tlie  Irish  people  to  the 
priests  has  often  struck  me  as  curious.  The 
average  intelligent  Irish  Catholic,  so  far  as  my 
experience  holds,  is  as  critical  of  priests  as  the 
average  Protestant  is  of  the  Protestant  clergy. 
He  will  tell  you  in  conversation  how  this  one  is 
grasping  and  the  other  narrow  to  the  point  of 
bigotry,  as  freely  as  he  will  praise  a  courageous 
priest  for  his  courage  and  a  good   priest  for  liis 

12J 


riMESTS  AND  PAJISONS  123 

generosity.  At  the  same  time  he  has  uot  yet 
succeeded  in  creating  an  atmospliere  of  critical 
opinion  in  the  light  of  which  the  bad  qualities  of 
bad  priests  would  gradually  disappear,  and  the 
good  qualities  of  good  priests  have  due  and  intelU- 
gent  lionour. 

Probably,  the  reason  why  in  the  public  as  opposed 
to  the  private  life  of  the  country  the  priests 
have  been  thus  kept  outside  the  scope  of  criticism 
is  that  they  liave  already  been  attacked  and 
criticised  so  much  and  so  wronghcadcdly  by 
the  other  side.  1  am  sure,  if  the  Protestant  clergy 
had  been  attacked  by  the  Catholics  witli  the 
same  blind  bitterness  with  which  the  Catholic 
clergy  have  l)eeu  attacked  by  the  Protestants,  we 
should  see  tljc  Protestants  rallying  around  their 
ecclesiastical  leaders  witli  a  bewildering  warlike 
enthiisiasin.  If  Ireland  is  ;i.  [)ri('Ht-ridd('ii  country 
— and  it  is  not  a  priest-ridden  country  to  anything 
like  the  degree  which  most  people  suppose — it 
is  largely  because  the  Irish  people  as  a  whole 
have  not  been  left  to  work  out  their  own  salvation 
without  interference  from  England,  and  because 
the  Catholics  of  the  country  have  not  been  left 
to  work  out  their  own  salvation  without  inter- 
ference from  Protestants. 

If  you  doubt  the  first  of  these  reasons,  you 
had  better  read  Mr  George  Bernard  Shaw's 
preface  to  "Jolm  Bull's  Other  Island."  If  you 
doubt  the  second,  I  cannot  think  that  you  have 
studied  the  kind  of  book  which  an  Irish  Protestant 


124       HOME  LIFE  IN  IKELAND 

usually  reads  when  he  sits  down  to  learn  the 
truth  about  Ireland.  It  is  hy  preference  a  ])ook 
attacking  priests,  and  if  it  is  written  by  a 
Catholic,  or  a  professing  Catholic — so  much  the 
better.  This  represents  the  Protestant  spirit,  the 
Protestant  attitude,  not  at  its  best,  but  at  its 
most  usual.  It  is  this,  along  with  British  policy, 
as  set  forth  in  a  well-known  letter  of  Lord 
Paudolph  Churchill,  that  has  done  more  than 
anything  else  to  drive  tlie  Irisli  Catholic  publicly 
into  the  priest's  arms. 

I  say  "  publicly,"  because,  as  I  have  already 
mentioned,  there  is  almost  a  superfluity  of  private 
criticism  of  the  priests  among  the  people.  The 
Irish  temperament  seems  to  me  to  show  a  curious 
combination  of  the  satirical  and  the  idealistic, 
and  the  priest  is  as  likely  to  be  a  figure  of 
mirtli  in  a  satirical  phrase  as  he  is  to  be  idealised 
into  a  saint.  The  priest,  it  must  be  rememljered, 
is  not  a  stranger  who  has  come  down  from  the 
sacred  niouiitaiiis  among  tlu;  jn'o^tlc.  ;  \\{'.  is  ahuost 
always  one  of  the  people  tliemselves.  I  have 
no  means  of  getting  at  figures  about  the  family 
origin  of  the  priests ;  but,  from  all  I  can  hear, 
it  would  be  near  the  truth  to  say  that  the  priest 
is  usually  the  son  of  a  farmer,  and  tliat,  when 
he  is  not  the  son  of  a  farmer,  he  is  usually  the 
son  of  a  publican.  It  is  the  Catholic  farmer's 
summit  of  pride  to  have  a  son  clever  enough 
at  books  to  be  sent  in  for  the  priesthood,  just 
as  it  is  the  Presl)yterian  farmer's  ultimate  glory 


rillESTS  AND  PARSONS  125 

to  have  a  soo  of  sufficient  learning  to  be  sent 
on  for  the  ministry. 

Jewish  parents  never  dedicated  their  chiklren  to 
the  priesthood  of  God  with  greater  pride  than 
is  sometimes  felt  l)y  Catholic  and  Presbyterian 
parents  in  Ireland  when  devoting  their  sons  to 
a  similar  service.  I  am  sure,  indeed,  that  in 
both  creeds  the  ambitions  of  religious  fathers, 
and  especially  of  religious  mothers,  have  thrust 
up  into  the  pul[)it  a  good  many  young  men 
who  were  by  nature  intended  to  live  on  a  more 
commonplace  and  human  level. 

One  of  the  most  generally  satirised  faults 
among  priests — a  fault  which  is  a  constant  subject 
of  joking  all  over  the  country — is  one  to  which 
the  farming  classes  arc  especially  liable,  and  if 
many  priests  arc  guilty  of  it,  this  is  not  because 
they  are  priests,  but  because  they  are  farmers' 
sons.  Farmers  in  the  mass,  I  think,  are  every- 
where noted  for  their  reverent  tenderness  for 
money.  Sometimes  they  cling  to  money  thriftily  ; 
sometimes  they  cling  to  money  wastefully.  In 
Ireland,  where  thrift  has  been  so  frequently  dis- 
couraged by  law,  and  where  even  a  small 
sufficiency  of  money  has  about  it  something  of  a 
miraculous  wonderfulness,  the  unprofitable  sort 
of  saving  is  the  general  rule.  The  Irish  farm- 
born  priest  often  brings  his  father's  moncy-lovinn- 
characteristics  with  him  into  his  new  calling. 
It  is  only  fair  to  him  to  say,  on  the  other  hand, 
that,    so    far    as    one    can    hear    from     (VithoUc 


126       HOME  LIFE  IN  IKELAND 

witnessess,  the  priest  usually  gathers  money, 
not  for  his  own  enrichment,  but  either  for  the 
glory  of  his  church,  or  in  order  to  help  his  parents, 
sisters,  and  brothers. 

There  is  nothing  for  which  the  priests  are 
more  freely  blamed,  perhaps,  than  for  the  fees 
which  they  demand  in  connection  with  marriages. 
Some  people  talk,  indeed,  as  though  every  })riest 
in  the  country  were  a  leech-like  creature,  who 
would  never  perform  a  marriage  ceremony  until 
he  had  drained  the  unfortunate  bridegroom  of 
the  last  possible  penny.  This,  of  course,  is 
nonsense,  and  a  libel  on  many  good  men.  As 
one  of  the  gentlest  of  priests  said  to  a  friend 
of  mine  some  time  ago,  "Not  only  docs  the 
priest  often  marry  poor  people  for  nothing,  but 
sometimes  you  will  find  him  buying  the  ring 
with  which  he  marries  them."  It  is  not  long- 
since  a  Munster  priest  made  an  effective  protest 
from  the  pulpit  against  the  idea  that  the  clergy 
will  refuse  to  mai-ry  a  poor  man  unless  he  can 
give  them  a  rich  reward  for  it.  "  If  any  man 
here,"  he  announced  from  the  altar,  "  has  the 
courage  to  take  a  woman  by  the  hand  and  say 
in  the  presence  of  God  that  lie  wants  to  marry 
her,  let  him  conui  to  me  and  I'll  marry  him 
without  any  charge." 

The  majority  of  priests,  of  course,  expect  a 
good  fee  when  the  bridegroom  is  able  to  afford 
it.  I  heard  of  a  rich  Catholic  who  was  married 
some    time    ago,    and    who    after    the    ceremony 


PRIESTS  ANU  PARSONS  127 

handed  the  priest  ten  pounds.  "  Are  you  joking  ?  " 
said  the  priest,  with  a  scornful  look  at  the 
money.  Personally,  I  think  it  is  a  good  thing 
that  the  marriage-fee  should  have  some  relation 
to  the  means  of  the  bride  and  bridegroom.  On 
tlie  other  hand,  there  is  no  doubt  that  there 
are  more  than  a  liandful  of  really  extortionate 
priests  scattered  through  the  country  who  are 
a  burden  both  to  rich  and  poor.  It  is  almost 
impossible  to  give  any  approximate  idea  of  the 
extent  to  which  extortion  is  practised  on  the 
occasion  of  mai-ria.gcs.  Accounts  vary  from  ])lace 
to  place,  and  most  people  judge  all  the  clergy 
by  the  priest  in  their  own  neighbourhood.  Add 
to  this  the  fact  that  one  bad  priest  gets  talked 
about  more  than  twenty  good  ones,  and  you 
will  see  how  diflicult  it  is  to  arrive  at  anything 
like  a  confident  conckision  on  the  matter. 

I  do  not  know  how  far  the  figures  given  by  a 
correspondent  in  "  The  Irish  Nation  "  some  time 
ago  may  be  regarded  as  typical  of  Catholic 
Ireland.  Speaking  of  a  district  in  the  west  of 
Ireland,  the  writer  declared  that  it  is  customary 
for  the  i)riest  to  demand  £4  for  marrying  a  poor 
man  like  a  labourer,  and  £10  for  a  man  in  the 
position  of  a  schoolmaster.  AVhen  the  bride  and 
bridegroom  belong  to  the  farming  classes,  the 
priest,  we  are  told,  discovers  the  amount  of  the 
fortune  which  goes  with  the  marriage,  and  assesses 
liis  fee  accordingly.  Often  on  occasions  like  this, 
says  the  same  writer,  a  bargain  is  struck,  and  the 


128       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

holy  sacrament  is  preceded  by  a  conversation  sucli 
as:  "Do  it  for  £13,  father."  "No,  [  won't 
marry  you  under  £16."  "Split  the  difference, 
father."  And  so  on,  and  so  on.  That  there  are 
priests  as  bad  as  this  is  unquestionable.  But  are 
they  numerous  ?  Are  they  in  the  majority  ?  I 
liave  met  too  many  kindly  and  manly-eyed  priests 
myself  to  believe  that  this  sui)position  can  be 
true.^ 

1  CharleB  Kickham,  who  was  sentenced  to  fourteen  years' 
imprisonment  for  Fenianism,  wrote  a  too  little  known  novel, 
*'  Knockiiagow,"  which  gives  an  excellent  picture  of  Irish  life  and 
customs  ill  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Ivickhiim, 
who  was  an  earnest  Catholic,  expressed  the  view  of  many  of  the 
clergy  and  laity  of  his  church  nsgarding  exorlntant  marriage-fees 
in  tlie  following  passage  of  dialogue  in  that  novel  : 

"  Maybe,"  said  Maurice  Kearney,  "  the  marriage  money  has 
Boraething  to  do  with  keeping  people  from  getting  married.  Ned 
Brophy  tells  me  the  priest  will  charge  twenty  pounds  fur 
marrying  him." 

"  Well,"  replied  Father  MacMahon  with  a  laugh,  "  that  is  not  so 
much,  bearing  in  mind  that  old  sauce-pan  you  told  us  of.  But 
another  parishioner  of  mine  tells  me  his  match  is  broken  off 
altogether  on  account  of  the  exorbitant  demand  of  the  priest.  The 
father  of  the  girl  ha<l  only  lifteen  acres  uf  land,  ami  the  priest 
wanted  (ifteen  pounds  for  marrying  liis  daugliler." 

"I  know  all  about  that  case,"  said  Father  Hannigan.  "He 
went  against  the  priest  at  the  election." 

"  That  makes  the  matter  worse,"  rejoined  Father  MacMahon. 
"Such  jiractices  will  liavi;  the  cil'ect  oi'  making  llm  jicople  look 
upon  thii  priest  as  a  tyrant,  lint  in  the  pari.-,li  to  \viii<li  I  refer,  1 
am  assured,  as  a  rnle,  the  i'armer  niu.^t  pay  half  a  ycar'-s  rent  lu 
the  priest  for  marrying  his  daughter." 

"What  do  you  think  of  the  old  sybtem  of  public  weddings  ?" 
asked  Father  Hannigan  ;  "  when  friends  and  neighbours  were 
invited,  and  tlie  priest  went  round  with  a  2->late  for  hia  collection.' 

"I  liked  it,"  replied  Father  .MacMahon.  "Indeed  1  was  looked 
upon  as  singular  because  I  did  my  best  to  encourage  the  people  to 


PKIESTS  AND  PARSONS  129 

I  heard  recently  of  a  case  of  priestly  extortion — 
though  not  in  coiniection  with  marriages — which 
the  priest's  own  parishioners  may  liave  regarded  as 
typical,  ])iit  wliich  the  action  of  a  Bislioj)  proved  to 
be  o])[)os(mI  to  the  (hH!eiit  traditions  of  the  (Mnirch. 
It  wjis  tli(!  custom  of  this  priest  to  m;i,k(i  his  jx^.ople 
supply  him  with  farm  produce  which  lie  always 
accepted  as  a  gift.  The  Bishop  of  the  diocese  got 
wind  of  tlie  thing,  1  suppose,  for  he  stopped  a  man 
who  was  driving  a  load  of  liay  near  the  priest's  house 
one  day,  and,  after  some  talk,  asked  him  where  he 
was  going  with  the  hay.     The  man  told  him  that 

it    was     to    Father    's    house.       Tlie    Bishop 

delicately    drew    out    the    statement    that    Father 

113  had  not  bought  the  hay,  but  was  expecting 

it  for  notliiug.  "  Oo  home,"  he  said  to  tlie  man, 
"and  take   tht;  h;iy  b;ick   with  you."      "But   what 

will    l*\a(Ji('r •  s!iy  ?  "    protcslcd    the   poor  in;i,n 

in  terror,  "  if  1  don't  bring  ]iim  the  Jiay  after 
him  telling  me  to  bring  it  ?  "  The  Bishop  ex- 
keep  up  the  old  system.  It  made  them  more  social  and  neigh- 
bourly. Tlie  priest,  too,  felt  that  what  he  got  was  given  cheerfully. 
And  besides,''  added  I'^ather  MacMahon,  laughing,  "he  went 
home  with  a  heavier  purse." 

"I  remember  what  you  said  at  the  last  public  wedding  we  had 
iu  this  parish,"  said  Mr  Kearney.  " 'Twas  at  Tom  Donnelly's. 
The  collection  was  larger  than  you  expected,  and  when  you  were 
thanking  them  you  said  no  matter  how  small  the  sum  might  be, 
they  could  say,  'Go  home  now,  sir,  you  are  paid'  ;  but  that  if  it 
was  a  private  wedding  you  could  charge  what  you  liked.' 

"  I  dare  say  Bome  of  the  bridegroom's  friends  have  often  thought 
of  my  words  since.     But  I  fear  we  are  becoming  more  genteel  and 
more  selfish  every  day  ;  so  perhaps  it  is  as  well  to  make  people  pay 
for  their  gentility." 
I 


130       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

plained    that    Father    did    not    require   the 

hay  now,  and  that  he  himself  would  l)e  re.s[)onsil)le 
for  what  he  told  the  man  to  do. 

Many    people    will    look    on    the    extortionate 

Father  as  the  typical  priest,  and  will  pass 

over  the  fact  that  the  humane  Bishop,  who  is  one 
of  the  most  Q-enerous  of  the  leaders  of  his  Church 
in  Ireland,  also  belonged  to  the  priestly  order. 
Another  comment  that  may  be  made  here  is  that 
it  is  not  in  every  district  in  Ireland  that  extortion 
such  as  I  have  mentioned  could  Ije  practised. 
Some  of  the  more  prosperous  farmers  would  never 
submit  to  it.  In  many  pai-ts,  liowcvcu',  povi'rty 
lias  demoralised  ull  the  iii(h!j)eiidence  ouL  ol  the 
peo[)le. 

The  lavish  generosity  which  the  Catholics  show 
in  supporting  their  priests  and  churches  is  the 
subject  of  continual  amazement  and  respect  among 
the  better  sort  of  Irish  ]*rotestants.  I  have  heard 
Presl)yterian  ministers  more  than  once  wishing 
that  they  possessed  the  Catholic  secret  of  })('rsuad- 
ing  the  people  to  give  cheerful  gifts  to  God,  and  a 
pious  Presbyterian  lady,  who  was  commiserating 
the  fate  of  misguided  Catholics  to  me  one  day, 
wound  up  her  lamentation  with,  "  Well,  there's 
one  thing  in  whic-li  we  would  do  well  to  follow 
their  example.  We'd  be  better  Christians  if  we 
gave  as  generously  to  our  Church  as  they  do  to 
theirs." 

As  may  be  imagined,  however,  there  are  two 
sides  to   this  rjuestion.      Not  only  are  the   peo})le 


riMESTS  AND  PARSONS  131 

very  ready  to  give,  but  the  Church  is  very  ready  to 
ask.  Ou  tlie  other  liand,  it  is  not  so  ready 
to  ask  as  is  couteudcd  by  some  imaginative 
people  Avlio  tell  you  that  in  parts  of  Belfast 
it  expects  contributions,  not  only  from  the 
Catholics  themselves,  but  from  the  Protestant 
traders  with  whom  the  Catholics  deal.  1  know 
an  energetic  little  anti-Catholic  shop-keeper  who 
used  to  complain  bitterly  that  he  had  to  contribute 
to  the  Catholic  funds.  lie  was  afraid  that, 
if  his  name  were  not  read  out  from  the  altar 
in  the  list  of  subscriptions,  his  Catholic  cus- 
tomers would  cease  dciHug  with  him.  y\nd  so, 
Avitli  the  one  hand  he  was  helping  to  support  the 
Catholic  Church,  and  with  the  other  he  was  trying 
to  undo  his  work  by  sul)scribing  to  a  Presl)yterian 
mission  for  the  conversion  of  Irish  Catholics  to 
i*j-otestaiitisin. 

In  oue  of  the  biggest  towns  in  the  west  of  Ire- 
land, the  leading  priest  outdid  anything  suggested 
in  Belfast  in  coaxing  subscriptions  from  non- 
Catholics  during  the  present  year.  All  through 
Lent,  when  an  opera-company  or  circus  or  anything 
of  the  sort  came  to  the  town,  it  only  received 
"  permission  to  perform "  when  an  undertaking 
had  been  given  that  the  proceeds  of  one  even- 
ing's entertainment  should  be  handed  over  to 
a  diocesan  project  in  which  the  priest  was 
interested.  One  of  the  entertainments  that 
arrived  in  the  town  at  the  time  was  Toft's  Hobby 
Horses,  and  these  had  to  gallop  round  to  an  even- 


132       HOME  LIFE  IN  IHELANi:) 

iiig's  orgaii-griiRling  on  ])cli.'ilf  of  the  (^liiu'tih. 
Tliis  story  has  appeared  in  print  in  a  Duhlin  paper, 
which  gives  the  name  ot"  the  priest  and  the  parish 
concerned,  and,  as  it  has  uot  been  contradicted,  I 
take  it  for  granted  that  it  is  true. 

A  good  many  Catholics  liold  tliat  some  of  the 
financial  methods  of  tlieir  church  have,  to  say  the 
least  of  it,  gone  desperately  out  of  date.  Take, 
for  instance,  the  method  of  collecting  the  priest's 
income.  In  country  places,  two  collections  on 
behalf  of  the  priests  are  held  during  the  year — 
one  at  Easter,  one  in  November.  Each  meml)er 
of  the  chnrcli  gives  his  contriljution  as  he  goes  in 
at  the  chapel  door — Catholic  cliundies  are  called 
chapels  in  Ireland  just  as  Dissenting  c]nir('hes  are 
in  England — and  tlie  amount  is  duly  noted  down 
by  the  priest's  delegates.  Ultimately,  the  list  of 
the  names  of  all  the  parishioners  on  the  c]iaj)el  roll 
is  read  out  by  the  [)riest  from  tiie  altar,  and  with 
the  name  of  each  person  is  read  out  the  amount  of 
his  subscription — it  may  Ik-  a  pound  or  it  may  be 
nothing.  8ome  priests  go  a  step  lurther  than  this. 
They  not  only  read  out  the  names  and  the  sub- 
scriptions (or  the  non-subscriptions),  but  they 
make  comments  on  the  amounts  su])scril)ed,  flatter- 
ing or  the  reverse,  according  as  they  think  each 
parishioner  has  or  has  not  given  in  fair  proportion 
to  his  means.  This  is  a  cause  of  acute  miser}^  in 
some  places,  and,  human  nature  l)eing  wliat  it  is, 
it  would  be  strange  if  many  country  people,  in- 
tiuenced  either  ))y  vanity  or  by  fear  (jf  the  priest's 


PRIES'IS  AND  P7VRSONS  133 

remarks,  did  not  occasionally  contribute  a  good 
deal  more  than  tlieir  means  justify. 

I  heard  lately  of  a  labourer  in  the  west  {whom 
I  will  call  Martin  Henry),  who  put  down  a  shilling 
as  his  coiitriljution,  and  had  it  returned  to  him  by 
the  priest's  orders  as  insulhcient.  The  man  was 
very  poor — perhaps,  even  a  shilling  was  more  than 
he  could  afford — so  rather  than  give  more  he  gave 
nothing.  When  the  priest  was  reading  the  names 
out  from  the  ;iltar — after  the  pattern  of  "James 
lawyer,  five  shillings;  Owen  Latimi^r,  a  })<)und  " — 
he  paused  opi)()site  the  labourer's  name  and  uttered 
tbe  words:  "  l\biri.iii  llcnr)' — wli;i,t  Davy  shot  in 
the  lough — nothing."  It  is  said  that  Henry  nearly 
took  a  bodily  revenge  on  the  priest  after  this,  for 
they  met  on  the  road  and  some  sharp  words  passed. 
Just  as  Henry  seemed  to  l)e  about  to  strike,  how- 
ever, the  priest  let  him  know  that  he  had  the  Holy 
Sacrament  on  his  person,  being  in  fact  on  his  way 
to  a  death-bed.  To  attack  a  priest  who  is  carrying 
the  Holy  Sacrament  is  an  act  of  sacrilege,  of  which 
no  Catholic  would  willingly  be  guilty,  and  Henry 
withheld  his  hnnd  for  the  occasion. 

In  some  of  tlie  town  districts,  I  l^elieve,  the 
priest's  dues  are  collected  by  the  priest  himself 
instead  of  at  the  church  doors.  These  regular 
calls  of  the  priest  in  liis  parishioners'  houses  for 
liis  money  im])ress  themselves  u[)on  the  minds  of 
the  people,  ajid  the  result  is,  as  it  would  ])e  in  any 
other  church,  a  good  deal  of  sjitirical  gossip. 

One   of    the    priestly   levies    which    has    been 


134       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

criticised  a  good  deal  is  that  wliich  is  made 
in  some  parts  of  the  country  on  the  occasion 
of  wakes  and  funerals.  [  describe  in  another 
chapter  how  at  times  like  these  a  plate  is  left  in 
the  room  with  the  coffin  so  that  all  visitors  to  the 
house  may  contribute  something.  This  custom  of 
making  a  collection  for  the  priest  at  i'unerals  goes 
back,  I  believe,  to  the  days  of  tlu;  Penal  Laws, 
when  the  livelihood  ot"  a  priest  was  precai'ious,  and 
the  generosity  of  the  people  was  only  too  anxious 
to  find  such  an  expression  as  these  occasional 
funeral  gifts.  Nowadays,  when  })riests  have 
assured  livings,  the  oH'erings  continue  out  of 
custom  rather  than  for  any  oilier  r(;asoii. 

Priests  seem  to  be  divided  in  opinion  as  to 
whether  this  custom  should  be  done  away  with. 
Not  long  ago  a  priest  in  the  south  of  Ulster  was 
asked  to  omit  the  collection  for  a  single  occasion, 
and  refused.  The  wife  of  a  conijiaratively  prosper- 
ous man  had  died.  The  collecting-])late  was  didy 
laid  beside  her  coflin,  and  every  visitor  to  the 
liouse  chiidvcd  his  (-ontrihution  oji  the  plate.  The 
husband,  a  sensitive  man,  Ijcgan  to  feel  an  acute 
agony  as  the  thing  went  on.  lie  felt  that  it  was 
offering  a  kind  of  disres[)ect  to  the  dead.  He 
went  to  the  priest  and  promised  to  give  him  any 
sum  he  liked  to  name  as  the  probable  amount 
the  collection  would  reach — a  larger  sum,  if 
necessary — if  only  the  plate  were  removed,  and 
an  end  put  to  the  indecent  business.  The  priest 
could  not  see  his  way  to  grant  the  request.      "I 


PRIESTS  AND  PARSONS  135 

must  tliiiik  of  tlie  precedent,"  he  said.  Here  again 
1  must  repeat  the  warning  not  to  judge  all  the 
Irish  priests  l)y  this  one.  It  is  the  less  generous 
priests  about  whom  most  of  the  stories  are  told. 

The  fault  most  commonly  imputed  to  Irish 
])riests  aflor  tin;  love  of  money  is  the  love  of 
j>(>\v(M'.  Ill  regard  lo  tins,  it  is  prohnhly  true  to 
siiy  that  the  average  priest  loves  2)ower  as  much 
as  the  average  Protestant  minister  in  Ireland  and 
elsewhere,  and  that  he  grasps  as  mucli  of  it  as  he 
c-;m.  It  is  a  way  with  men  in  uiiirdnn,  wliether 
ch'iical,  military,  or  of  ;uiy  other  sort,  ;ill  {]\v.  world 
over.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  testimony  in  regard 
to  the  priests  a] id  the  power  they  wield  ought  to 
give  pause  to  those  who  are  inclined  to  hasty 
condemnations.  "  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion," 
he  says,  "  tliat  tlie  immense  i)Ower  of  the  Irish 
Roman  Catholic  clergy  has  been  singularly  little 
abused,"  Of  course,  the  immense  power  is  in 
itself  an  abuse,  but  if  there  had  been  a  healthy 
national  atmosphere  in  the  country,  and  a  healthy 
national  system  of  education,  this  would  have 
given  us  a  body  of  clear- thinking,  independent 
laymen,  who  would  have  come  forward  to  direct 
the  public  life  of  the  country,  and  so  have  made  a 
good  deal  of  the  social  and  political  leadership  of 
the  priests  unnecessary.  This  is  a  condition  of 
affairs,  I  may  say,  which  many  of  the  priests 
tliems(?lves  desire.  Did  not  that  excellent  Irish 
man,  the  present  Bishop  of  Galway,  some  years 
ago  put  forward  as  a  reason  for  the  establishment 


136       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  a  Catholic  Uiiivertiity  the  need  of  au  educated 
Catholic  laity  in  order  to  do  away  with  the  power 
of  tlie  priests  in  public  life,  "so  far  as  it  is 
abnormal  or  unreasonable  ?  " 

The  piiests,  indeed,  are,  some  of  them,  as  anti- 
clerical as  their  severest  critics  in  the  sense  that 
they  desire  to  see  a  strong  and  self-reliant  race  of 
men  and  women  growing  up  in  Ireland,  and  taking 
the  destinies  of  the  country  into  their  hands.  It 
must  be  rememl)ered,  when  the  Irish  IVishops  say 
reactionary  things  or  do  reactionary  things — as, 
like  all  Bishops,  they  frequently  do— that  tliey  are 
not  necessarily  rein-esentative  of  the  best  elements 
in  the  priestliood.  The  r>ish<)])S  are  a])})ointed 
from  IJome,  S(nnctimcs  in  op[)().siti()ii  to  tlie  wishes 
of  the  mass  of  the  priests  in  their  luiw  diocese; 
and  many  Catholic  laymen  will  tell  you  that 
Rome  is  more  desirous  to  win  the  Ihitish  Empire 
for  Catholicism  than  to  help  to  Ijuild  up  a  strong 
and  independent  nation  in  Ireland,  and  that  a 
priest  too  closely  identified  with  the  natitmal 
movement  is  not  likely  to  lind  himself  appointed 
to  a  Bisho})'s  see.  On  the  other  hand,  L  do  not 
think  that  the  Bishops  of  any  church  in  the  world 
are  representative  of  the  most  intellectual  or  the 
most  ])rogr(.'Ssive  of  the  ('lergy  undci'  tluiin. 

Ireland  has  its  lidl  share  of  palriolii-  a)id  noble 
priests — juiests  who  are  not  slow  to  come  out  and 
oppose  the  Bishops,  when  the  Bisho[)S  oppose  the 
interests  of  Ireland,  During  the  present  year,  for 
instance,  the  Standing  Committee  of  the  Bishops 


PRIESTS  AND  PARSONS  137 

declared  publicly  against  making  IriBli  an  essential 
subject  for  matriculation  and  the  first  year's 
examination  in  the  new  National  University. 
Some  of  them  even  forbade  the  clergy  in  their 
dioceses  to  do,  speak,  or  write  anything  in  favour 
of  giving  the  Irish  language  this  prominence  in  the 
University  curriculum.  Wherever  the  discipline 
of  the  Church  permitted  them,  priests  have  none 
the  less  been  found  to  come  forward  side  by  side 
with  Catholic  and  Protestant  laymen  to  insist  that 
Irish  must  be  given  its  due  place  in  the  University, 
or  that  tlic  University  must  get  no  h(;l[)  or  sanction 
i'rom  the  Irish  [)eo|)le.  l^^ithcr  (J'Ciarain,  P.P.,  for 
instance,  told  the  people  at  Castleblayney  Feis 
that  "  the  Bishops  of  Ireland  had  as  good  a  right 
to  come  into  his  garden  and  tell  him  to  dibble  his 
('abbage-])la,nts  head  downwards  as  they  had  to 
tell  the  whole  Irish  nation  that  they  would  nob 
tolerate  any  essential  Irish  in  the  new  University." 
The  curious  f(\ature  in  the  situation  is  that  many 
Protestant  Unionists  who  have  always  been  de- 
nouiicing  the  Irish  Catholics  as  a  priest-ridden 
})eople,  are  doing  all  in  their  power  to  prevent 
their  fellow-countrymen  at  the  present  moment 
from  showing  their  independence  of  the  Bishops 
in  secular,  as  opposed  to  religious,  affairs.  The 
power  of  the  Bishops  is  a  much  more  real  danger 
in  Irish  life  than  the  power  of  the  priests.  The 
priests,  as  I  have  said,  are  in  numberless  cases 
on  the  side  of  the  people  from  whom  they  are 
sprung. 


138       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

"  I'd  be  a  Home  Ruler,  if  it  weren't  for  the 
priests,"  is  a  remark  Protestant  Unionists  make  to 
you  till  you  are  weary  of  it.  People  who  talk  like 
this  do  not  recognise  the  faet  that  })riests  only 
wield  an  undue  power  because  Ireland  is  not 
an  independent  country  with  an  independent 
atmosphere.  They  do  not  re(*ognise  either  that 
the  Protestant  Irish  parson  and  the  Catholic  Irish 
priest  have  in  many  cases  the  same  vices  and  the 
same  virtues.  You  will  find  tyrants  and  bullies  in 
both  creeds,  as  you  will  find  gentlemen  in  both 
creeds.  You  will  find  cultured  men  in  both  creeds, 
as  you  will  find  boors  in  both  creeds.  You  will  find 
misers  in  both  creeds,  as  you  will  find  patterns  of 
generosity  in  both  creeds.  J  imagine,  however, 
that  you  will  find  a  greater  variety  of  charactei- 
and  temperament  among  the  priests  than  among 
the  clergy  of  the  other  churches.  In  all  churches, 
of  coiu'se,  the  Catholic  Church  included,  the  clergy 
j)ass  by  slow  gradations  from  saints  and  heroes 
down  to  liypocrites  and  bullies.  iJiit  it  is  only  in 
the  Catholic  Church,  i  think,  that  you  will  find 
the  merry,  almost  Epicurean  priest  and  the  black- 
browed  kill-joy  priest  ecpially  typical  figures. 

In  one  parish  you  will  have  a  priest  wlio  is 
really  the  father  of  his  peo])le.  l[e  encourages  the 
boys  and  girls  to  meet  in  the  (Jaelic  League  classes, 
and  to  spend  a  share  of  their  evenings  in  dancing. 
He  goes  to  see  the  young  men  hurling  on  Sundays, 
and  takes  an  interest  in  the  little  plays  which  they 
perform  with  so  lively  a  spirit.     The  children  do 


PRIP^STS  AND   PARSONS  139 

not  fear  him  wlieu  they  meet  him  on  the  roads. 
He  is  as  welcome  as  a  stranger,  or  as  a  son  come 
home  from  America,  in  the  houses  of  the  poorest 
and  h\'ist  siio]>l)isli  ]»coplc.  He  strives  to  find 
work  for  his  people,  at  liome,  so  tliat  they  need  not 
omigrate,  lie  (rains  tli(>m  U)  hahits  oF  [)lcasant- 
iiess  as  well  as  in  hahits  of  goodness.  Such  a 
priest  is  like  a  living  soul  in  his  parish — a  light- 
Ijringer,  a  builder  of  society.  I  have  met  several 
priests  ol"  this  high  chnracter.  'i'hey  are,  I  may 
note  in  ])assing,  freer  from  religious  bigotry  than 
any  other  equally  large  body  of  clergy  in  Ireland. 
Perhaps,  none  of  them  has  done  more  excellent 
work  in  putting  a  heart  of  progress  and  delight 
into  his  people  than  Father  Matthew  Maguire, 
the  parish  priest  of  Kilskeery 'in  County  Fermanagh. 
He  has  made  the  schools  in  his  parish  among  the 
most  efficient  in  Ireland.  He  collected  a  few 
pounds,  and  set  on  foot  a  lace-making  industry 
which  gives  out  hundreds  of  pounds'  worth  of  work 
among  the  homes  of  his  people  every  year,  in  the 
turning  of  a  wrist,  he  has  converted  a  district, 
which  was  nearly  dead  to  Ireland,  into  a  ])lnce 
where  you  will  now  be  greeted  freely  in  Irish  by 
those  who  meet  you  on  the  road.  His  parish  is 
a  centre  of  the  Home  Brightening  Association — a 
body  with  a  somewhat  sentimental  name,  but  with 
a  fine  purpose.  Only  let  the  churches  fill  their 
pulpits  with  clergymen  like  Father  Matthew 
Maguire,  and  the  uudcrilow  of  satire  about  ministers 
of  religion  will  quickly  lose  its  justification  through 


140       HOME  LIFE  IN   IRELAND 

Ireland.  Men  like  him — and  there  are  many  with 
similar  aims  now  working  in  the  Gaelic  League — 
curates  more  often  than  parish  priests,  perhaps — 
are  the  salt,  not  only  of  their  church,  Ijut  of  their 
country. 

Contrasted  with  this  kind  of  priest  is  the  kill- 
joy, the  sour  Puritan.  Not  that  I  object  to 
Puritanism.  Puritanism  of  the  sort  wliich  is  not 
repression  of  joy  l)ut  tlic  attainment  of  joy  through 
cleanness  of  mind  and  cultivation  of  decent  and 
delightful  things  is  one  of  the  saving  graces  of 
trchmd.  Tlie  Puritanism  of  many  of  the  priests, 
liowcvcr,  docs  not  mean  tlic  training  of  the  young 
men  to  think  lionoural)ly  a]>out  women,  but  the 
training  of  tliem  not  to  think  a])out  women  at  all. 
It  means  the  suppression  of  all  delights,  not  their 
reasonal)le  cultivation.  When  a  priest  like  this 
approaches  down  a  lane,  the  boys  and  girls  fly 
separate,  as  though  even  conversation  l)ct\veen 
them  were  the  beginnings  of  sin.  He  forljids  the 
holding  of  Gaelic  League  classes  unless  the  class 
for  young  men  meets  on  a  different  evening  from 
the  class  for  young  women.  He  sees  only  the 
dangerous  side  of  dancing  and  none  of  its  divine 
necessity.  He  is  a  prohibiter  of  joy  ;  he  hushes 
song  ;  he  ])rea(dies  the  llames  of  hell,  and  is  a  spectre 
of  terror  for  children.  He  nudvcs  liis  ])arish  a 
desert,  and  calls  it  the  peace  of  God's  kingdom. 
The  Puritanical  priest  is  sometimes  a  well-meaning 
man — even  a  lovable  man — but  the  results  of  liis 
pseudo-Puritanism  are  none  the  less  disastrous. 


PIUKSTS  AND  PARSONS  141 

Young  men  and  women  of  adventurous  mind 
and  character  will  not  remain  in  such  a  kingdom  of 
gloom,  and  some  of  them  go  to  America,  no  less  to 
escape  from  the  face  of  the  priest  than  to  escape 
from  the  face  of  poverty.  I  know  a  lady  who 
organised  Gaelic  League  classes,  and  had  a  country- 
side dancinfj  and  sinijinff  on  her  lawn  on  summer 
evenings.  But  the  priest  stepped  in.  He  saw 
nothing  in  the  whole  business  but  the  danger  to 
the  girls  of  walking  home  in  the  company  of  the 
young  men.  Tlie  lady  offered  to  see  every  girl 
home  h(>rs(']f  willi  a  lantern.  But  the  ))riest,  with 
his  harrowing  vision  of  the  world,  the  flesh  and  the 
devil,  did  not  abandon  his  objections,  and  the  little 
flame  of  pleasure,  which  had  promised  brightness 
to  a  valley,  flickered  and  became  a  part  again  of 
the  ancient  uidifting  gloom. 

It  may  not  b(M)ut  (»r  ]>lace  here  to  mention  the 
case  of  a  priest  in  a  midland  county  who  denounced 
the  Gaelic  League  for  holding  mixed  classes  of  boys 
and  girls.  His  insults  to  the  Gaelic  Leaguers  from 
the  altar  outraged  the  sense  of  decency  of  one 
of  them  to  sucli  a  degree  that  he  rose  in  the 
chapel  during  the  service  and  challenged  the  truth 
of  the  priest's  words.  Of  course,  there  was  a  great 
scandal.  But  the  sympathies  of  all  that  was  best 
in  Catholic  Ireland  were  with  the  Gaelic  Leaguer, 
and  the  priest's  "Damn  the  Gaelic  League!"  has 
become  historic. 

I  hope  1  have  made  it  clear  that  there  are 
two  sorts  of  priestly  despotism  in  Ireland.     One  is 


142       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

the  natural  despotism  of  a  good  and  educated 
man  among  people  who  have  been  impoverished 
and  denationalised  out  of  a  great  part  of  their 
iutellio;ence  and  character.  The  other  is  the 
unnatural  despotism  of  men  who  are  greedy  for 
power  and  for  opportunities  to  let  other  people  feel 
it.  The  good  priest,  it  must  be  admitted,  often 
interferes  with  the  conduct  of  his  people  in  a  way 
which  fortunately  or  unfortunately  no  Protestants 
would  endure  from  their  clergy.  I  have  heard,  for 
instance,  of  a  priest  in  an  Irish  part  of  London  who 
went  into  a  public-house  one  night  and  swept  the 
glasses  of  drink  from  the  counter  on  to  the  floor. 
1  have  seen  a  ))ri(ist  myself  on  :i  g;ihi-day  in  an  Irisli 
country  town  come  into  a  puhiic-house,  and  say, 
"  Boys,  remember  that  any  man  who  shows  himself 
the  worse  for  drink  to-day  is  disgracing  Ireland," 
and  order  the  barman  in  front  of  us  all  not  to  serve 
any  man  who  was  not  sober  with  drink.  Many  of 
tlic  driidvcrs  were  indignant  at  the  interference 
with  their  liberty,  and  many  of  them  showed  before 
evening  how  foolish  it  was  to  imagine  them  priest- 
ridden. 

I  know  of  a  priest  who  went  even  Ijeyond  this  in 
cutting  into  the  liberty  of  his  people.  He  arrived 
in  the  chapel  one  day  to  celebrate  a  marriage,  but 
no  brideo;room  came.  The  rumour  beuan  to  be 
whispered  that  the  man  was  l)acking  out  of  the 
marriage  at  the  last  moment.  80  the  priest 
resolutely  marched  off  to  the  hotel  where  the  man 
was  employed,  and,  finding  him  in  hiding  under  a 


IMMESTS  AND  PARSONS  143 

billiard-table,  dragged  him  off  by  maiu  force  and 
married  liim  whether  lie  would  or  no. 

These  are  some  trivial  examples  of  the  power 
which  a  good  priest  has  at  every  turn  in  the  lives 
of  his  pco])le.  Sometimes,  fi'om  tlie  Protestant  point 
of  view,  the  priestly  innueuce  is  used  to  less  ex- 
cellent })urpose.  The  Catholic  theory  is  against 
mixed  education,  for  instance,  and,  wdien  a  Catholic 
parent  sends  his  son  to  a  non-denominational 
school  or  college,  some  priest  or  other  usually  does 
his  best  to  ])ersuade  the  parents  to  ta,kc  tlie  boy 
away,  and  have  him  educated  at  a  Catholic  institu- 
tion, ill  s[)ite  oi"  these  persuasions,  however,  tJiei'c 
are  always  a  number  of  independent  Catholics  who 
send  their  sons  to  the  non-denominational  schools 
and  (!oih'g('S.  Even  if  they  did  not,  I  do  not  see 
.  what  cause  the  other  si(h3  has  t(j  gnindjle.  I  my- 
self detest  sectarian  education  licai-tily,  but,  if  some 
people  are  conscientiously  inclined  to  it,  1  do  not 
see  what  grounds  we  others  have  for  getting  angry 
with  them.  There  ought  to  be  room  in  a  decent 
country  for  all  sorts  of  conflicting  ideals. 

Sometimes,  unfortunately,  the  clergy  themselves 
will  not  admit  this.  There  have  been  few  things 
more  sliameful  in  recent  Irish  history  than  the 
suppression  by  Cardinal  Logue  of  the  weekly  paper 
called  "  The  Irish  Peasant,"  merely  because  it 
attacked  the  clerical  control  of  Irish  elementary 
cducatioji  from  an  intellectual  Catholic  layman's 
point  of  view.  Any  institution,  Protestant  or 
Catholic,  which  ruthlessly  sui)presses  criticism  of 


144       HOME  LIFE  IN   IRELAND 

itself  is  to  my  mind  committing  slow  suicide. 
Truth  itself  cannot  survive  in  an  atmospliei-e  which 
is  not  lilled  with  the  conflict  of  free  ideas. 

I  should  like  to  end  these  glimpses  of  the  priest- 
hood with  a  statement  of  excellent  things.  People 
often  tell  you  that  the  priests  are  to  hiame  for  half 
the  public-houses  in  the  country.  1  have  heard  it 
said  in  Belfast  that  if  you  see  a  fiuieral  with  a 
crowd  of  priests  following  it,  it  is  sure  to  be  a 
publican's.  Now,  it  is  probaljle  that  a  great  many 
priests,  like  other  clergymen,  have  shares  in  drink 
establishments.  It  is  likely,  too,  that  the  publican's 
large  subscriptions  often  give  liim  higli  importance 
as  a  parishioner.  At  the  same  time,  so  far  as  I  can 
judge,  the  priests  as  a  whole  do  more  persistent 
work  in  the  cause  of  temperance  than  any  other 
body  of  clergymen  in  Ii-eland.  Privately,  they 
adhere  to  the  old-fashioned  sort  of  hospitality 
which  partly  consists  in  ollering  drink  to  their 
guests— a  constant  soiu'ce  of  sliocdc  to  ci'itics  in 
search  of  faults,  'i'he  best  of  them,  however,  are 
tireless  in  urging  upon  tli(;ir  ])e()[il(i  the  necessity 
of  temperate  lives. 

In  some  parishes,  they  have  an  excellent  custom 
of  getting  men  to  sign  the  teetotal  pledge  for  a 
year.  Many  people,  who  would  shrink  from 
pledging  their  entire  life- time,  are  rpiite  willing  to 
promise  a  year's  abstinence  from  liquor.  In  one 
parish  that  I  know  the  priest  calls  once  every 
quarter  upon  all  those  who  are  willing  to  i)romise 
to  abstain  from  drink  for  three  months  to  stand 


PRIESTS  AND  PARSONS  145 

up  during  the  chapel-service.  His  parish  used  to 
be  intemperate.  Now  practically  all  his  people 
stand  up  once  a  quarter  at  mass,  and  take  the 
three-monthly  pledge.  I  have  been  in  his  parish 
during  the  bustle  and  convivial  excitement  of  a 
fair  day,  and  did  not  see  a  single  drunken  person. 
It  was  a  strange  contrast  to  a  fair  1  had  seen  in  a 
parish  at  the  far  side  of  the  same  county.  There 
the  thing  seemed  more  like  some  grotesque  debauch 
as  one  saw  the  old  men  with  flaming  faces  and  the 
young  nuM)  with  wiindering  licads  reckling  in  tlie 
cveninir  to  tlicir  homes. 

In  attempting  to  make  generalisations  to  fit  tlie 
Protestant  and  Presbyterian  clergy,  you  will  again 
find  it  difficult  to  say  who  is  the  typical  clergyman 
and  who  the  exceptional.  Some  of  the  older  men 
are  domineering,  and  greedily  snuff  up  the  honour 
paid  to  them  by  simple  people.  They  are  passion- 
ately dogmatic  in  their  creed,  and  they  are  so 
busy  preaching  dogma  that  the  virtues  of  excellent 
conduct  in  ordinary  life  seems  to  be  almost  for- 
gotten by  them.  In  other  words,  they  are  so  busy 
looking  after  the  Pope  that  they  often  forget  their 
still  more  dangerous  enemy,  the  Devil.  Only  a 
few  years  ago,  a  young  man  of  unusually  faultless 
character  was  refused  ordination  in  the  Presbyterian 
church  because  he  would  not  assent  to  that  part 
of  the  Confession  of  Faith  which  declares  the  Pope 
to  be  Anti-Christ.  Splendid  fighters,  these  old 
Presbyterians  encourage  their  people  in  tlie  virtues 
which  they  already  have,  but  they  do  not  frequently 


146       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

enough    encourage    tliem    to    acquire   the    virtues 
which  they  have  not.     True,  they  preacli  temper- 
ance, and  ahnost  invariably  practise  it.     But  tliey 
have  permitted  Ulster  to  drift  sexually  into  loose 
ways  that  are  unknown  in  the  Catholic  parts  of 
Ireland.     Sabbath-breaking  is  in  their  eyes  one  of 
the  deadly  sins,  and  the  cruel  Sabl)atarian  atmos- 
phere which  they  have  created  in  Ulster  is  largely 
responsible,  I  think,  for  the  revolt  of  many  of  the 
young   men   and  women   against  all   Christianity 
whatsoever.     The  fires    of   Hell,    too,    burn   with 
somewhat  sepulchral  flames  in  the  imaginations  of 
some  of  the  older  men,  and  dancing,  card-playing, 
and   other  neutral   pleasui'cs  are  to   them  merely 
the  enticements  of  mortal  sin.    1  know  Presbyterians 
who  could  forgive  a  sensual  error  more  easily  than 
a  breach  of  the  Sabbath,  though  this  would  by  no 
means  be  true  of  the  majority  of  them. 

As  for  dancing,  it  is  not  always  the  clergymen, 
sometimes  it  is  the  people  themselves,  who  are  the 
most  tyrannous  in  suppressing  any  sucli  ex|)rcssi()M 
of  joy  in  the  world.     1  know  a  young  clergyman 
who  went  to  a  dance  in  the  country  not  long  ago. 
The  elders  agreed  that  it  must  not  happen  again, 
and  told  him  so.     The  Presbyterian  elder  can  be 
as  <»'reat  a  tyrant  as  the  Catholic  priest.      1   know 
another  clergyman  who  believed  that  a  man  could 
live  in.  the  spirit  of  Christ  and  yet  play  an  occasional 
game  of  billiards.      When  a   country  churcii  was 
thinking  of  asking  him  to  become  its  minister,  it 
was  an  elder  from  the  town  who  wrote  anonymous 


rillESTS  AND  TARSONS  147 

letters  to  the  members,  warniug  them  of  the 
billiard-playing  habits  of  the  young  man.  The 
old  sort  of  elder  and  the  old  sort  of  minister, 
indeed,  have  between  them  helped  to  make  many 
of  the  country  parts  of  Ulster  an  intellectual  and 
social  dos(Mt. 

The  rresbytcrian  minister,  like  tlic  priest,  is 
often  the  subject  of  jokes  among  ordinary  people 
on  the  ground  of  his  love  for  money.  When  he  is 
called  from  ;i  poor  congregation  to  a  rich  one,  for 
instance,  and  publicly  remarks  tliat  it  lias  pleased 
the  Lord  to  call  him  to  a  sphere  of  wider  usefulness, 
the  laity  is  inclined  to  smile.  Before  leaving  one 
church  for  another,  a  minister  must  always  receive 
the  permission  of  his  Presbytery  to  make  the 
change.  Some  years  ago,  a  minister  in  a  provincial 
town  was  called  to  a  church  in  Belfast,  and  he  told 
his  Presbytery  of  the  invitation.  He  said  that  he 
had  consulted  the  Lord  as  to  what  he  should  do, 
but  that  he  found  it  impossible  to  be  certain  what 
was  the  Lord's  will ;  consecpieiitly,  he  would  leave 
himself  in  the  hands  of  the  Presbytery,  to  do  with 
as  they  thought  best.  Of  course,  it  was  taken  for 
granted  that  the  Presbytery  would  regretfully 
permit  him  to  go  to  the  larger  sphere.  His  intimate 
friend,  who  was  beside  him,  had  already  asked 
him  before  the  meeting  for  his  private  wish,  and 
the  minister  had  conveyed  to  him,  as  he  thought, 
that  he  was  ready  to  go  to  Belfast ;  indeed,  he 
had  already  begun  to  make  some  of  the  arrange- 
ments  for  his   new    household.     His    frieud   was. 


148       HOME  LIFE  IN   IRELAND 

uuluckily,  rather  deaf,  and  took  the  matter  up  in 
the   opposite  sense.     He  rose  in  the  Presbytery 
and  said  that  the  work  of  their  brother  had  been 
so  greatly  blest  in  his  present  sphere,  and  he  had 
made  himself  so  beloved  by  his  people,   that  he 
thought  they  ought  to   ask   him  to  continue   to 
labour  yet  further  in  that  part  of  the  vineyard. 
The  unhappy  minister,  hearing   what  was  beiug 
said,  distractedly  caught  his  friend's  attention,  and 
let  him  know,  in  the  vulgar  saying,  that  he  was 
putting  his   foot   in    it.      The   other   showed    no 
embarrassment,   but  calmly  went  on  to  say  that, 
perhaps,  on   the  other  hand,  they  had  no  right  to 
limit  their  brother's  uyefuhiess,  and   that,  great  as 
would  l;e  the  loss  to  them  and  to  their  Presbytery 
as  a  result  of  his  removal  to  Belfast,  they  must 
think,    not    of  their   own    interests,    but   of  the 
interests    of   the    Church    as    a    whole.     After    a 
rigmarole  of  this  sort,  he  moved  that  the  Presbytery 
should  give  their  ])rother  permission  to  accept  the 
call  to  Belfast. 

Both  clergy  and  laity  will  tell  you  stories  like 
this  with  a  satirical  delight.  Not  that  the  Presby- 
terian clergy  as  a  whole  are  particularly  worldly. 
But,  like  the  priests,  they  have  their  share  of 
worldly,  comfortable  men  among  them.  One  hears 
even  of  cases  of  clergymen  who  extract  marriage 
fees  from  the  people  in  a  way  comparable  to  that 
which  is  so  generally  condemned  in  tlie  priests, 
though  the  sums  are  never  comparably  exor- 
bitant.     No    one,    however,    could    say   that  the 


PRIESTS  AND  PARSONS         149 

Presbyterian  clergy  are  people  who  use  their  pro- 
fession to  make  themselves  rich.  Their  chief  fault 
is  not  love  of  money,  but  a  kind  of  pride  in 
social  power,  and  a  narrow  refusal  to  fight  against 
the  bigotry  so  common  among  their  people.  If 
the  Presbyterian  chu'gy  had  loved  Ireland  as  much 
as  they  have  hated  Rome,  they  could  have  made 
Ulster  a  home  of  intellectual  energy  and  spiritual 
buoyancy  long  ago.  They  have  preferred  to  keep 
Ulster  dead  to  fine  ideas  rather  than  risk  the 
appearnnce  of  a  few  unsettling  ideas  among  the 
rest.  Consecpiently,  one  sees  in  Ulster  a  good 
deal  more  of  hard  dogma  than  of  courageous 
thought  and  spiritual  living. 

The  younger  Presbyterian  clergy,  like  the 
younger  priests,  are  gradually  coming  under  the 
influence  of  a  new  and  broader  spirit.  There  is  a 
reaction  going  on  against  all  the  barren  dread  of 
Catholicism.  The  young  men,  or  some  of  them, 
realise  that  the  f^ogey  of  Popery  has  been  standing 
in  the  path  of  the  Church,  preventing  its  advance 
towards  any  fair  ideals.  Tliey  are  taking  a  new 
interest  in  the  condition  of  the  poor.  They  are 
l)aying  less  hood  to  the  mere  dognuis  of  their 
Church,  and  more  to  the  spirit  of  Christ  wdiich  is 
at  the  back  of  those  dogmas.  They  are  beginning 
to  think  of  Ireland,  and  to  see  that  the  creation  of 
a  just  and  generous  atmosphere  in  Ireland  is  itself 
a  sacred  work. 

Tlie  clergy  of  the  Protestant  Church  of  Ireland 
have  many  of  the  faults  and  many  of  the  virtues 


150       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  the  Presbyterian  clergy.  Like  tliese,  tliey  in- 
clude many  moral  men,  many  narrow  men, 
many  tyrannical  men,  and  a  moral,  narrow, 
tyrannical  man  is  a  danger  in  any  community. 
You  find  some  of  them  preaching  religious  fury 
from  Orange  platforms  on  the  Twelfth  of  July. 
The  majority  of  them,  however,  like  the  clergy  of 
the  other  churches,  lead  comparatively  imobtrusive 
lives,  much  fuller  of  sacrifices  and  unselfish  gentle- 
ness than  a  person  like  myself  can  appreciate.  I 
am  afraid  in  this  chapter  I  have  dealt  less  than 
justly  with  the  excellent  aspects  of  the  lives  of 
Irish  priests  and  parsons.  Tliese  men,  liundreds 
of  them,  have  noble  ideals  of  their  own,  noble 
passions.  If  their  politics  have  been  narrow, 
their  creed  hard,  and  their  thoughts  of  other 
churches  somewhat  hostile  and  militant,  it  is 
because  we  in  Ireland  have  been  living  in  the 
backwash  of  two  mingling  tides  of  religious  and 
political  bitterness.  The  clergy  have  behaved  in 
most  circumstances  with  the  same  mixture  of 
nobleness  and  ignobleness  as  their  peopK^  'J'his  is 
at  once  their  defence  and  their  condemnation. 


CHAPTER  VIll 

THE  ULSTERMAN's  NOTORIETY 

I  HAVE  already  denied  tlie  foolish  superstition — a 
superstition  wliicli  lias  vitiated  politics,  both  Irish 
and  English,  for  a  century — that  the  Ulstcrnian  is 
only  a  sort  of  foreigner  in  Ireland.  Ireland  has 
marked  the  Ulsterinan  for  her  own — marked  him 
racially  as  well  as  geographically.  If  he  is  differ- 
ent from  the  general  people  of  the  south  and  west, 
it  is  not  a  deep  division  of  blood  and  of  permanent 
interests.  It  is  a  division  of  ancient  religious 
ideals,  and  of  a  political,  intellectual  and  economic 
atmosphere  created  for  the  most  part  by  those 
ideals.  Irish  Protestant  and  Irish  Catholic  were 
never  given  a  fair  field  upon  which  to  fight  out 
the  battle  of  the  Reformation.  The  religious  issue 
was  constantly  allowed  to  become  confused  wqtli 
the  national  issue,  and,  as  a  result  of  various 
Imperial  aml)itions,  Ireland  did  not  experience 
the  unifying  effects  of  a  civil  war  free  from  foreign 
interference.  If  Ireland  had  enjoyed  civil  wars  to 
the  extent  to  which  England  has  enjoyed  them, 
she  might  not  be  more  Protestant  than  she  is,  but 
she  would  certainly  be  more  united  and  prosperous. 
As  it  is,  Ireland  has  remained  a  divided  country. 

151 


152       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

Ulster,  in  spite  of  more  tliau  one  fair  promise  of 
better  things,  is  still  a  nation  within  a  nation. 
Some  one  has  said  of  her  that  she  is  Irish  to  the 
English  and  English  to  the  Irish.  This  is  a  view, 
however,  that  takes  into  account  only  her  politics, 
and  expresses  none  of  her  deeper  liuman  character- 
istics. I  like  better  the  thought  of  the  writer  who 
summed  up  the  Ulsterman  as  "  a  veneer  of  John 
Knox  upon  Rory  of  the  Hills."  This,  I  think, 
helps  us  more  sharply  than  any  other  phrase  I 
know  to  realise  that,  even  though  the  Ulsterman 
may  be  cousin  several  times  removed  to  the  Scot, 
Ireland  is  the  true  mother  who  bore  and  nurtured 
and  shaped  him.  The  Ulsterman  may  be  a  Pro- 
testant and  a  Presbyterian,  but  at  least  lie  is  an 
Irish  Protestant  and  Presbyterian,  not  a  Scotch  or 
an  English  one. 

The  Ulsterman's  religion  has  been  at  once  his 
making  and  undoing.  It  has  sent  him  about  the 
world  with  a  flame  in  his  head,  and  this  is  a  virtue 
or  an  evil  just  as  accidents  may  determine.  I 
have  heard  a  traveller  with  some  knowledge  of 
South  Africa  declare  that  you  might  meet  a  man 
from  any  other  part  of  the  world  out  there,  and 
might  even  work  and  live  with  liim  for  a  season, 
and  at  the  end  of  the  time  still  l)e  ignorant  wliether 
he  was  a  Protestant  or  a  Catholic  or  nothing  at  all, 
but  that  you  could  scarcely  sit  down  to  have  a 
drink  with  a  man  from  anywhere  in  the  Belfast 
end  of  Ulster  without  his  immediately  setting  out 
to  discover  what   was  your   religion   and   telling 


THE  ULSTERMAN'S  NOTORIETY  153 

you  his  own.  This  curiosity  about  the  religion 
of  otlier  people  is  one  of  the  most  distinguish- 
ing characteristics  of  the  Ulsterman.  Pious 
cliurcli-goeis,  l)lasphemers,  saints,  money-grubbers, 
loosc-livcis,  r('Rj)cctal)lcs — the  people  of  the  north, 
with  c()tn])arativoly  few  exceptions,  will  not  re- 
main satisfied  until  they  have  ranged  you  up  like 
an  armed  soldier  behind  either  the  Pope  or  Martin 
Luther. 

Sometimes  this  is  an  ignoble  curiosity  ;  some- 
times it  is  harmless  and  merely  shows  a  preoccupa- 
tion witli  religious  or  semi-religious  things.  As 
an  instance  of  it,  a  countryman  in  County  Derry 
told  me  one  day  how  he  had  some  months  pre- 
viously gone  to  Belfast  to  look  for  work,  and  had 
taken  a  job  as  tram-conductor.  The  first  day  he 
turned  up  at  the  stables,  he  declared,  another 
worker  came  up  to  him  inquisitively  and  said  : 
"  What  peg  do  you  hang  your  hat  on  ? "  My 
acquaintance  thought  himself  very  clever  because, 
squaring  his  jaw  and  looking  the  other  man  de- 
terminedly in  the  eyes,  he  had  answered  :  "  On 
the  right  peg."  "  After  that,"  lie  said,  with  an 
air  as  though  he  had  still  his  knife  in  the  other 
despite  the  shining  fact  of  his  own  victory,  "  I 
wasn't  much  bothered." 

This  is  an  instance  of  apparently  harmless 
curiosity,  though  assuredly  the  countryman  did 
not  think  so.  Unfortunately,  the  curiosity  is  not 
always  harmless.  The  Ulsterman  is  changing  fast 
nowadays — he  is    becoming  more  Irish    and  less 


154       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

bigoted — ])ut  until  comparatively  recently  it  was 
no  unusual  thing  in  Belfast  for  a  worker  to  come 
up  to  his  employer  and  say  "  So-and-so's  an  R.C. 
(Roman  Catholic),  I'm  not  going  to  work  along 
with  an  R.C."  ;  and  on  occasions  of  special  excite- 
ment the  Catholic  workers  at  the  ship-building 
yards  and  elsewhere  have  had  to  stay  away  from 
their  work  till  the  heat  of  sectarian  frenzy  gene- 
rated l)y  some  religious  celebration  or  political 
crisis  had  died  away,  or  at  least  diminished  to  a 
normal  ill-humour.  On  such  occasions  there  has 
been  an  almost  mediaeval  damper  abroad — to  limb, 
if  not  to  life — but  even  on  many  occasions,  it 
must  bo  confessed,  to  life  itself.  Pxilfast,  when 
ma(hlened,  is  as  capable  of  a  J*a[)ist-hiint,  as  the 
French  Revolutionaries  were  of  a  hunt  for  aristo- 
crats. I  have  a  friend,  indeed,  who,  whenever  he 
had  been  out  looking  on  during  a  Belfast  riot, 
used  to  go  home  and  read  Carlyle's  "  French 
Revolution."  He  said  that  in  movement  and 
colour  it  read  like  a  description  of  things  in 
Belfast. 

Religious  bigotry  is  by  no  means  confined  to 
the  ordinary  workers  in  Ulster.  It  is  also  common 
among  the  foremen,  the  managers,  and  even  the 
employers — though  by  no  means  so  demoniacally 
common  as  it  has  been  the  custom  to  represent. 
I  met  a  foreman  belonging  to  a  mill  one  day,  who 
agreed  with  me  in  deploring  an  outburst  of 
sectarian  trouble  that  had  just  taken  i)lace  in  the 
town.     He  earnestly  stated  his  belief  that  every 


THE  ULSTERMAN'S  NOTORIETY  155 

mau  had  a  riglit  to  ]iis  owu  religious  opinions,  and 
lamented  the  fact  that  Protestants  and  Catholics 
could  not  agree  to  live  in  peace  together.  In  the 
course  of  our  conversation  I  mentioned  laughingly 
the  way  in  which  sonic  Protestants  talked  of 
Catholics  as  though  they  were  hopelessly  dishonest 
and  not  to  be  trusted.  The  foreman's  eyes  filled 
with  dark  excitement. 

"  It's  true  enough,"  he  said  gravely.  "  Pve 
worked  with  Protestant  and  Roman  Catholic  girls 
for  fourteen  years,  and  never  made  no  dilTcrence 
between  one  and  the  other,  and  I  know  what  Fm 
saying.  1  tell  you  this  for  a  fact:  you  can  go 
out  of  a  room  and  leave  a  Protestant  working,  and 
while  you're  away,  she'll  work  just  as  hard  as  if 
your  eye  was  on  her ;  but  so  much  as  turn  your 
back  on  a  Pomnii  (Jatliolic,  and  sli(>/ll  dro])  her 
work  like  .'i,  hot  brick,  .and  devil  the  hand's  turn 
will  she  do  unless  you  stand  over  her  and  make 
her  do  it." 

His  speech  had  become  impassioned  and  fanatical. 
I  had  scratched  a  reasonable  man  and  found  a 
bigot.  It  may  be  thought  strange  of  me  to  put 
down  the  foreman's  statements  to  fanaticism  rather 
than  accept  them  as  the  careful  observations  of  a 
practical  mau.  But  I  have  seen  too  often  how 
the  practical  Ulsterman  with  a  flame  in  his  head 
can  become  utterly  incapable  of  impartial  judg- 
ment, jjcsides,  1  am  a  practical  Ulsterman 
myself,  and  J  have  witnessed  as  many  disproofs  of 
Catholic  laziness  as  of  Protestant  black-heartedness. 


156       HOME  LIFE  IN  IKELAND 

The  anti-Catholic  passion  is  ahnost  the  first 
passion  that  an  Ulster  non-Catholic  child  knows — 
or  was  until  yesterday.  Fanaticism  among  the 
working  classes  is  disappearing,  but  tlie  badly 
educated  middle  class  Protestants,  many  of  whom 
fear  that  the  death  of  fanaticism  will  mean  the 
birth  of  Socialism,  have  still  an  abundance  of  the 
old  catchwords  of  distrust.  When  I  was  a  child, 
the  fiivourite  wall-scribbling  in  Belfast  was  :  "  No 
Pope  Here."  The  Catholic  retort  to  this,  which 
you  would  see  chalked  under  it  on  many  a  red 
gal)le-end  was  : 

"  He  who  wrote  this  wrote  well, 
Vi)V  the  .siiiiio  in  writ  on  tlm  i^ates  of  1T(;11." 

— a  couplet  that,  used  in  another  connection,  has 
been  traced,  I  believe,  to  Dean  Swift.  The  Pro- 
testants, on  their  side,  are  not  without  their 
rhymed  statements  of  faith.  It  is  an  excepliuiial 
Protestant  child  who  does  not  know  tlie  couplet : 

"Up  the  long  ladder  and  down  the  short  rope, 
God  save  King  William,  to  Hell  with  the  Pope." 

This  cry  of  "To  Hell  with  the  Pope,"  though 
in  another  generation  it  will  be  more  silent,  one 
hopes,  than  the  harp  on  Tara's  walls,  has  long 
been  the  shibboleth  of  true  blue  Protestantism  in 
Ulster.  Once  when  I  was  walking  with  a  friend 
on  the  road  near  Lisburn,  a  man  in  a  greasy  caj), 
like  an  engineer's,  came  towards  us  on  a  bicycle 
and,  just  as  he  was  passing  us,  lie  looked  at  our 
faces    suddenly   and,   with   a  loud    shout  of  "  To 


THE  ULSTERIMAN'S  NOTORIETY  157 

Hell  with  the  Pope,"  pedalled  off  as  fast  as  he 
could  down  the  road.  Evidently  he  had  thought 
that  we  looked  like  Catholics,  and  had  felt  it  as 
a  duty  laid  on  liim  to  challenge  our  faith. 

This  is  one  of  the  humours  of  the  religious  wars 
in  Ulster — that  one's  face  is  supposed  in  many 
quarters  to  betray  the  fact  that  one  is  a 
Catholic  or  a  Protestant.  I  cannot  say  exactly 
what  the  difference  between  the  two  kinds  of 
faces  is,  save  that,  I  think,  the  Catholic  has  a 
deeper,  more  sensitive  and  religious  eye,  while  the 
Protestant  looks  at  once  more  rugged  and  better 
fed,  and  has  an  eye  more  accustomed  to  size  up 
material  things  in  spite  of  all  his  semi-religious 
idealism.  The  difference,  however,  is  largely 
imaginary.  To  take  my  own  case,  for  instance, 
my  face  has  caused  me  to  be  taken  for  a  Catholic 
quite  as  often  as  for  a  Protestant.  1  remember, 
when  I  was  a  boy,  a  friend  of  mine — a  young 
Protestant  Nationalist,  whose  proud  boast  it  was 
that  he  had  "  a  Papish  face " — refused  to  let  me 
go  in  his  company  to  a  Nationalist  meeting  in  a 
field  outside  the  town,  because,  he  said,  my  face 
was  a  "  Protestant  face "  and  would  put  me  in 
danger.  Yet  another  friend  of  mine,  a  doughty 
Protestant,  was  going  through  Sandy  Pow,  an 
Orange  neighbourhood,  one  night  at  a  time  of 
trouble,  when  to  his  anger  and  amazement  he  was 
set  upon  as  a  Catholic  and  threatened  with  a 
beating.  He,  too,  had  the  good  or  Ijad  luck  to 
have  a  "Papish  face  " — an  expensive  gift  from  the 


158       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

gods.  At  that  time  it  was  thought  in  some 
quarters  to  be  a  sign  of  Papistry  if  one  went 
about  clean-shaven.  True-l)lue  Protestants  wore 
moustaches — a  Catholic  with  a  red  moustache, 
indeed,  was  unthinkable.  My  friend  had  been 
foolish  enough  to  shave  iiis  upper  lip.  He  would 
have  paid  the  penalty,  if  his  anger  had  not  roused 
him  to  a  pitch  of  denunciatory  eloquence  that  at 
once  convinced  and  humiliated  his  assailants. 

It  would  be  wrong  to  infer  from  all  this  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  friendly  intercourse 
between  Protestants  and  Catholics.  In  Belfast 
and  the  towns  an  ancient,  easily-fired  feud,  as 
between  Montagu  and  C'a})ulet,  is  the  rule,  but 
even  here  friendship  between  people  of  o})posing 
religions  is  by  no  means  so  uncommon  as  is  often 
supposed.  At  the  same  time,  the  Catholic  who 
mixes  freely  in  Protestant  society,  and  vice  versa, 
is  an  exceptional  person.  He  is,  as  a,  lule,  exceed- 
ingly popular — partly  because  of  his  obvious  broad- 
mindedness,  partly  because  he  is  looked  on  as 
something  of  a  miracle.  There  are  many  i*rotestant 
houses,  on  the  other  hand,  in  Avhicli  the  appearance 
of  a  Catholic,  however  broad-minded  he  may  be, 
would  be  as  unacceptable  as  the  appearance  of  the 
devil.  These  are,  I  imagine,  mostly  the  houses  of 
people  who  know  Catholics  only  through  "  Foxe's 
Book  of  Martyrs"  and  literature  of  that  sort,  and 
have  never  had  occasion  to  mix  with  them  and 
talk  with  them  as  flesh-and-blood  human  beings. 
If  the  children  in  houses  like  these  make  Catholic 


THE  ULSTETIMAN'S  NOTORIETY   159 

friends  at  school,  they  do  not  feel  like  Iniuging 
the  latter  home  and  introducing  them  to  their 
families.  Tliey  cannot  trust  their  parents  to  be- 
have tliemselves  in  such  unfamiliar  circumstances. 

Prol)ably  the  father  of  tlic  house,  who  himself 
subscribes  to  a  mission  for  proselytising  among 
the  Catholics  of  tlie  south  and  west,  would  honestly 
look  on  any  Catholic  companion  of  his  sou's  as  a 
deeply  designing  agent  of  the  Jesuits,  whose 
single  thought  in  life  was  how  most  speedily  and 
eirecLivcly  to  smasl)  the  Protestant  reh'gioii  to 
pieces.  The  presence  of  so  dangerous  a  (conspirator 
at  the  tea-tal)l(i — full  armed  with  Jesuit  wiles 
even  at  the  age  of  twelve — would  produce  an 
atmosphere  of  restraint  and  frowns.  After  the 
unwelcome  guest  had  gone,  the  son  of  the  house 
would  be  turned  upon  hy  an  indignant  Ijithcr  and 
warned  not  to  repeat  his  outrage  on  the  sanctity 
of  a  Protestant  home. 

I  do  not  say  that  the  average  Protestant  home 
is  so  exclusive  as  this,  though  I  think  tliat,  when 
it  is  not,  it  is  the  result  of  indifference  more  often 
than  of  lil)eral  ideas.  The  extreme  sort  of  exclu- 
siveness,  however,  is  more  common  among  the 
middle-classes  than  among  the  workers — much 
more  common  in  the  towns  than  in  the  country. 
Let  a  Protestant  girl  in  Belfast  have  a  Catholic 
friend  of  the  opposite  sex,  and  immediately  there 
is  a  hubbub  among  her  fimiily  friends  and  church 
acquaintances  as  thougli  the  world  was  in  danger 
of  coming  to  an  end.     The  majority  of  Protestant 


160       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

parents  would,  so  far  as  I  have  observed,  rather  see 
their  children  married  to  atheists  than  to  Catholics. 
This,  fortunately,  does  not  prevent  an  occasional 
young  man  and  woman  of  opposite  religions  from 
having  the  courage  to  marry.  In  cases  of  this 
sort,  the  woman  commonly  takes  the  religion  of 
her  husband,  though  sometimes  both  husband  and 
wife  remain  faithful  to  their  own  churches.  On 
the  whole,  T  think  mixed  marriages  show  as  high 
an  average  of  happiness  as  any  other.  They  are 
dangerous  experiments,  liowever,  among  people 
who  believe  that  those  of  an  opposite  religion  to 
their  own  are  doomed  to  everlasting  })uiiislimeut. 

]-*robably  I  have  said  enough  to  show  the  extent 
to  which  religious  l)itterncss  prevails  in  Ulster. 
It  may  be  no  harm,  however,  to  mention  one 
aspect  of  this  bitterness  which  is  not  without  its 
paradoxical  and  amusing  side.  Nothing  makes  an 
Ulster  Protestant  more  indignant  than  the  treat- 
ment which  is  said  to  be  meted  out  to  a  Southern 
Catholic  who  changes,  or  desires  to  change,  his 
relisfion.  It  never  seems  to  strike  that  i'rotestant 
that,  were  he  himself  to  propose  to  change  his 
religion,  his  fellow- Protestants  would  treat  him  in 
exactly  the  same  way.  I  knew  a  young  man  some 
years  ago  who  gradually  became  converted — or,  if 
you  like  the  word  better,  perverted — to  Catholicism, 
One  day,  after  the  news  of  the  conversion  was 
published,  he  met  in  the  street  the  two  sisters  of 
one  of  his  most  intimate  friends.  He  was  about 
to  greet  them  in  the  old  friendly,   cheerful  way, 


THE  ULSTERMAN'S  NOTORIETY   161 

raising  his  hat  and  eager  to  shake  hands.  They 
stared  at  him,  however,  as  though  they  had  never 
seen  him  before.  TJiey  were  educated  and — if  I 
may  use  a  silly  word — fashionable  girls,  but  they 
were  still  suflicieiitly  sturdy  in  their  Protestantism 
to  cut  a.  man  who  tuiJKnl  his  back — or  his  coat — 
on  the  Protestant  rcli<»ion. 

In  the  country  and  among  the  poorer  people,  as 
I  have  said,  a  healthier  spirit  rules.  Here,  too,  it 
must  be  admitted,  the  ancient  bigotries  are  alive, 
and  stories  pass  from  grandmother  to  grandchild 
of  the  wickedness  and  greed  of  priests,  and  of  the 
wiles  of  nuns,  and  memories  of  the  fires  of  the 
persecutor,  and  of  the  reputed  massacre  of 
Protestants  in  1641,  and  of  the  '98  incident  of 
tScullabogue  barn,  are  stuff  of  which  much  light 
conversation  is  made.  An  Orangeman,  sitting 
over  the  lire  with  you,  will  roll  you  off  a  long  list 
of  Catholic  crimes,  and  open  out  for  you  a  field  of 
blood-stained  lore  with  such  earnestness  and 
imagination  that,  if  not  convinced,  you  are  at 
least  overwhelmed. 

"There  was  oidy  one  man  that  ever  knowed 
how  to  treat  them,"  said  an  Orange  farmer  to  me 
cue  night  of  the  Catholic  Irish;  "and  that  was 
Cromwell.  He  never  let  them  get  their  head  up. 
It's  the  only  way." 

This  sounds  as  bad  as  anything  you  could  find 
among  the  middle-classes  of  Belfast,  so  that  some 
people  will  be  all  the  more  surprised  to  hear  that 
the  farmer,  who  spoke  in  such  a  manner,  lived  on 

L 


1G2       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

the  easiest  and  even  most  warm-hearted  terms 
with  his  Catholic  ueighbours. 

"  Do  you  tliiiik  1  don't  like  Roman  Catholics?" 
he  cried  one  day  when  I  was  putting  up  a  case  for 
them.  "  I  tell  you  I'd  sooner  have  a  Roman 
Catholic  than  a  Protestant  any  day.      All  my  best 

friends  are  Roman  Catholics.      Sure,  Willie  " 

(naming  a  Catholic  neighbour)  "and  me  is  never 
separate." 

Upon  this  [  cornered  him,  and  asked  him  if  he 

honestly  thought  Willie was  a  terril)le  fellow, 

who  would  cheat  him  and  lie  to  him  and  cut  his 
throat  in  a  moment  of  religious  excitement. 

The  Orangeman's  face  screwed  u])  in  bitterness, 
and  he  looked  at  me  from  wriidvled  eyes.  "Ay," 
he  declared  in  a  kind  of  sour  passion,  "he  would 
cheat  me  and  lie  to  me  and  cut  my  throat  or  any- 
thing else  for  the  sake  of  his  religion,  and,"  he 
added  surprisingly,  "  I  don't  blame  him  either. 
A  Roman  Catholic  is  a  Roman  Catholic  first  and 
your  friend  afterwards,  and  he'll  tlo  whatever  his 
priest  tells  him.  The  priest  tells  him  it  isn't  a 
sin  to  tell  lies  and  murder  for  the  sake  of  the 
Church,  and  that  he'll  go  to  Hell  if  he  doesn't  do 
as  they  bid.  I  tell  you  if  the  Roman  Catholics 
had  the  upper  hand  there  wouldn't  be  many 
Protestants  left  in  Ireland.     And,"  he  wo'  xid  up, 

with  a  knowing  look,  "  Willie would  have  to 

do  as  he  was  bid,  the  same  as  the  rest  of  them." 

The  reality  of  the  friendship  which  existed 
between  the  ultra-Orange  farmer  and  his  Catholic 


THE  ULSTEIIMAN'S  NOTORIETY  163 

friend  AVillie  was  made  manifest  on  a  critical 
occasion  during  the  last  Boer  War.  For  some 
reason  or  other,  a  rumour  arose  in  their  part  of 
the  country  during  the  early  days  of  tlie  war  that 
a  great  Catholic  rising  was  to  take  place,  and  that 
farmers  miglit  expect  to  liavc  Englisli  troops 
billeted  on  tliein  at  any  moment  for  tlie  protection 
of  the  defenceless  Protestant  majority.  Some  faces 
were  white  at  the  market  at  which  the  story  was 
spread,  and  not  the  least  white  was  our  friend  tlie 
Orange  farmer's — a  pardonable  whiteness,  seeing 
that  throat-cutting  and  burning  at  the  stake  were 
the  gentlest  of  deaths  to  the  possibility  of  which 
he  and  his  family  might  now  look  forward.  AVliile 
he  was  digesting  the  first  terrors  of  the  news,  his 
friend,  Willie,  appeared  along  the  street,  and  the 
Orangeman  went  up  to  liim  with  troubled  eyes, 
and  told  him  the  worst. 

"  And  I'm  saying,  Willie,"  he  broke  out,  with 
a  sudden  tearful  earnestness,  when  his  story  was 
told,  "  if  it  comes  to  war  in  the  end,  and  you  and 
me  finds  ourselves  on  opposite  sides  on  the  field  of 
battle,  1  swear  to  God  that  I'll  shoot  over  your 
head,  and  you  must  shoot  over  mine,  for,  man 
dear,  I'd  be  loath  to  kill  you." 

Thus  was  made  a  new  pact  of  friendship — a  pact 
that  has  its  comic  side,  but  that  has  still  about  it 
something  of  beauty,  and  that  helps  to  show  the 
foolishness  of  those  who  speak  as  though  the 
estranging  sea  between  Irish  Catholic  and  Pro- 
testant were  an  eternal  work  of  God,  and  not  a 


164       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

removable    bitterness    created    by   politicians  and 
journalists. 

The  tendency  of  Protestant  and  Catholic  in 
Ulster  for  some  time  past  has  been  to  unite,  and 
if  the  clergy  and  the  journalists  wished  for  this 
unity,  the  atmosphere  of  Ulster  could  be  cleared  in 
less  than  a  generation.  The  Press,  however,  is  in 
the  hands,  not  of  idealists,  but  of  heated  politicians, 
and  the  same  thing  holds  true  to  a  great  extent  of 
the  pulpit.  Protestants  are  more  likely  to  be 
warned  in  their  churches  ao;ainst  errors  of  Catliolic 
doctrine  than  against  errors  of  Protestant  conduct 
towards  Catholics  in  a  misbehavinix  world. 
8imihirly,  if  any  trouble  arises  between  Cathobcs 
and  Protestants  in  the  streists,  tlie  Unionist  Press, 
instead  of  commenting  upon  the  case  on  its  merits, 
denounces  it  at  once  as  a  Nationalist  or  Catholic 
outrage,  while  the  Nationalist  Press,  with  equal 
readiness,  represents  the  same  incident  as  an  un- 
provoked Orange  assault  on  unoffending  Catholics. 
Thus  innocent  and  well-meaning  [)eo[)le,  who  only 
read  papers  containing  their  own  views,  learn  to 
look  on  their  opponents  as  a  kind  of  savages,  lying- 
in  Avait  for  the  seed  of  the  righteous  with  stones, 
rivets,  and  bad  language. 

The  truth  of  the  matter  is,  of  course,  that  Ulster 
Protestants  and  Ulster  Catholics  are,  to  use  an 
expressive  phrase,  very  much  of  a  muclmess. 
There  are  broad-minded  Protestants  and  broad- 
minded  Catholics,  bigoted  Protestants  and  bigoted 
Catholics.     There  are  cruel    Protestants  and  cruel 


THE  UT.SIERMAN'S  NOIORIETY   165 

Catholics,  gentle  Protestants  and  gentle  Catholics. 
There  are  Protestants  who  would  like  to  see  all 
the  Catholics  swept  out  of  the  country,  and 
Catholics  who  would  like  to  see  Protestants  swept 
out  of  tlic  country  ;  Init,  to  match  tliem,  there  are 
Protestants  who  want  to  live  in  peace  and  friend- 
ship with  their  Catholic  neighbours,  and  Catholics 
who  want  to  live  in  peace  and  friendship  with 
their  Protestant  neighbours.  For  every  bigot  or 
black  sheep  you  find  on  one  side,  you  will,  as  an 
English  commentator  on  Ireland  would  say,  find 
two  on  the  other.  Protestant  and  Catholic  have 
been  looking  at  each  other  more  closely  and 
honestly  of  late,  and  have  each  been  amazed  to 
discover  how  human  the  other  is.  There  may 
never  h;i,ve  been  a  more  bitter  sort  of  bigotry  in 
Ulster  tlian  at  the  present  moment,  but,  on  the 
otlier  hand,  never  was  so  fine  and  genc)-al  a  spirit 
of  broad-mindedness  to  be  found.  Middle-aged — 
or  rather  century-old — bigotry  is  uttering  its  last 
cry,  and  it  is  a  loud  and  strident  cry,  so  loud 
indeed  that  many  people  are  unable  to  hear  beyond 
it  the  more  ])leasaut  and  gathering  voices  of  the 
peace-bringers. 

The  youth  of  Ulster  are  coming  to  see  more  and 
more  clearly  that  the  fears  of  their  fathers,  while 
they  may  have  had  an  intelligible  enough  origin,  are 
now  absurd.  Catholics  have  been  mixing  more 
freely  with  the  Protestants  during  the  last  few 
years  in  the  schools  and  colleges  than  they  used  to 
do.     This,  too,  despite  the  frequent  protests  of  the 


166       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

Catholic  Bishops  and  clergy — protests  which  afford 
the  old  kind  of  Protestant  a  sort  of  bitter  satis- 
faction, because  he  imagines  tliey  justify  him  in 
his  vigorous  faith.  On  tlie  whole,  however,  it  is 
doubtful  whether  sectarian  bigotry  is  very  much 
more  common  in  Ulster  than  in  England.  English 
Anglicans  and  Catholics  and  Nonconformists  make 
a  sufficiently  loud  noise  about  having  to  send  their 
children  to  schools  of  which  they  do  not  approve, 
and  I  have  heard  as  spitefully  narrow  things  said  in 
England  against  Nonconformists  as  I  ever  heard 
said  in  Ulster  against  Catholics.  In  Ulster  sectarian 
hatred  is  at  'least  a  passion  :  in  England,  so  far  as 
I  have  been  able  to  see,  it  is  a  pettiness.  I  once 
asked  an  En<(liHhman  whether  he  (jot  his  news- 
papers  in  a  certain  shop,  lie  said  that  he  did  not, 
because  he  "did  not  believe  in  encouraging  those 
damned  Nonconformists."  I  believe  his  spirit  is 
a  good  deal  commoner  in  the  country  pi^rts  of 
England  than  is  sometimes  realised.  There  was  a 
Scotch  lady,  for  instance,  who  took  over  a  school 
in  an  English  country-town  some  time  ago,  and 
who,  in  order  to  further  her  interests,  ceased  to  be 
a  professing  Presbyterian  and  became  a  member 
of  the  local  Anglican  Church.  The  Vicar  sent  his 
children  to  her  school,  till  one  day  it  became 
known  that  she  was  an  escaped  Dissenter,  where- 
upon he  immediately  withdrew  his  children  from 
the  care  of  a  teacher  with  so  dubious  a  past. 

I    mention    these    facts    merely    to   show    that 
it    is   foolish    to    represent,    as    some   people   do, 


THE  ULSTERMAN'S  NOTORIETY  1G7 

the  war  of  creeds  in  Ulster  and  throughout  Ireland 
as  an  unparalleled  phenomenon,  branding  the 
people  as  a  sort  of  religious  hooligans  wlio  would 
produce  a  kind  of  blend  of  the  Cromwellian 
massacres  and  St  Bartholomew's  Day  were  it 
not  for  the  watchful  care  of  a  humane  British 
Government.  The  Irish  in  Ulster,  as  in  the  other 
provinces,  would  get  on  excellently,  if  they  were 
only  left  to  themselves.  At  the  time  of  the 
recent  Belfast  dockers'  strike  this  tendency  to 
union  was  clearly  seen.  Mr  Jose[)h  Devlin,  the 
Natiouabst  J\l.L*.,  ;ui(l  Councillor  Boyd,  the 
Orange  Trade  Unionist,  followed  each  other  ou  the 
same  platform  and  pronounced  sectarian  bigotry 
among  the  Belfast  working  men  dead.  And 
dead,  or  on  the  way  to  death,  it  afterwards 
proved  to  be,  for  when  the  riots  broke  out — in 
which  tw^o  lives  were  lost — they  took  the  form 
of  fights  between  the  people  and  the  soldiers, 
never  between  the  Catholics  and  the  Protestants.^ 
Every  one  who  knows  Belfast  and  the  curious 
way  in  which  Catholics  and  Protestants  to  a 
large  extent  inhabit  different  districts,  communicat 
ing  with  each  other  through  numerous  short 
streets — streets  which  are  a  temptation  of  the 
evil  one  to  raiders  and  stone-throwers — will  realise 
the   significance   of  this   fact.     A  few    years   ago 

'  Tlie  Press  made  ;i  great  deal  of  tlic  J3elfast  riots  on  the  last 
twelfth  of  July.  'J'hese  riots,  however,  were  between  the 
Nationalists  and  the  police,  not  between  the  Catholics  and  the 
Orangemen.  They  did  not  signify  an  outbreak  of  the  old  religious 
bigotry. 


168       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

an  anti-military  riot  in  the  Falls  Road — the 
Catholic  quarter  of  the  city — would  have  been 
the  si<mal  for  a  hostini?  of  tlie  Protestant  forces 
on  the  Shankhill  Road  and  in  Sandy  Row.  Many 
of  the  enemies  of  the  strikers,  failing  to  recognise 
the  strength  and  the  extent  of  the  new  spirit, 
believed  that  su(^h  a  riot  had  only  to  he  pre- 
cipitated a  couple  of  years  ago  to  kindle  the 
old  fires  of  hatred  and  leave  the  Protestant  and 
Catholic  workers  divided  as  before.  As  things 
turned  out  on  this  occasion,  more  than  one  fiery 
Protestant  was  to  be  found  fighting  doughtily 
side  by  side  with  the  Catholic  rioters.  A  friend 
of  mine  who  was  through  the  riots  told  me  that, 
at  one  time,  some  stones  came  down  on  the 
rioters  through  a  side  street  from  a  group  of 
Orange  boys,  but  that,  instead  of  replying  to 
them  in  the  same  way,  the  Catholic  figliters  cried 
to  each  other :  "  Don't  throw  back.  We  have 
no  quarrel  with  the  Orangemen,  it's  the  soldiers 
we're  fighting." 

Indeed,  I  saw  something  of  the  same  spirit 
in  action  myself  on  the  night  after  the  riot, 
when  1  walked  through  the  disturbed  quarter. 
Not  the  men  of  tlie  Shankhill  Road  as  a  whole, 
but  a  few  boys  incited  by  a  iirebrand  whom  the 
Orangemen  do  not  take  very  seriously,  were 
shouting  an  occasional  song  of  defiance  and 
hurling  now  and  then  an  angry  stone  down 
the  gloom  of  a  connecting  street  into  the  Catholic 
district.     It    was    easy    to    see   that,  the    soldiers 


THE  ULSTEIIMAN'S  NOTORIETY  169 

having  been  hurriedly  witlidrawn,  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  people  were  becoming  a  little  irritated 
by  these  small  but  persistent  attacks  from  a 
new  source.  It  ia  to  their  credit,  however,  that 
tlicy  stood  there  in  the  darkness  and  endured 
(•halleng(i  and  attacks  without  an  clfort  at  retort, 
clergymen,  politicians  and  industrial  leaders  being 
tireless  with  their  wise  and  charitable  counsels. 
Indeed,  one  of  the  most  irresistible  peace-makers 
on  this  occasion  was  a  man  who,  I  knew  for 
certain,  had  been  among  the  most  impetuous  of 
the  stone-slingers  twenty-four  hours  previously. 
He  had  a  strong  belief  in  fighting  the  English 
whenever  and  wherever  possible,  but  he  did  not 
believe  in  Irishmen  fighting  each  other. 

It  is,  of  course,  as  yet  scarcely  possible  to 
test  the  depth  and  extent  of  the  new  spirit 
at  the  ballot-boxes.  It  is  a  spirit  which  is  affect- 
ing the  youth  of  tlie  province,  largely  without 
votes  and  without  oi-gnnisation,  rather  than  the 
old  and  the  middle-aged  who  have  still  control 
of  the  political  machine.  The  greater  part  of 
the  latter  will  never  realise  the  folly  of  their 
bigotry  until  they  awake  in  Paradise.  Youth, 
however,  ardent,  courageous  ,  determined,  is  be- 
ginning to  think  new  thoughts  and  to  make 
for  itself  new  ideals,  social,  national,  and  spiritual. 
It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  the  credit  of  the  new — 
or  the  coming — order  of  things  is  largely  due 
to  men  like  Mr  Lindsay  Crawford,  who  broke 
away    from    the    old    sort   of    Orangeism    to    tell 


170       HOIME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

his  fellow-Protestants  that  no  Irish  politics  could 
be  honourably  based  on  any  consideration  that 
did  not  include  the  passionate  love  of  Ireland, 
and  to  Parlijimentary  Nationalists  of  the  younger 
generation,  like  Mr  Joseph  Devlin  and  Mr  T.  ]\1. 
Kettle,  who  have  fouo;lit  election-battles  in  the 
new  faith  of  the  union  of  Orange  and  Green. 
I  do  not  hold  the  same  political  creed  as  Mr 
Devlin — indeed,  he  has  had  little  but  what  was 
disparaging  to  say  of  the  school  of  politics  which 
I  follow — but  every  one  must  recognise  that, 
in  spite  of  his  association  with  a  rather  sectarian 
society  like  the  Itihernians,  he  has  pcu'sistcntly 
set  his  Hice  aijfainst  reliti-iouH  hiuotry  tlirouuh  liis 
public  career.  Mr  Thomas  Sloan,  the  lnd('[)t'ndent 
Orange  M.P.,  might  send  down  a  no])le  name 
to  history  as  a  worker  for  the  same  end,  for  he 
has  a  strong  and  ardent  following.  The  question 
that  troubles  many  people  is,  Has  he  the  courage 
of  soul — no  one  doubts  his  physical  courage — to 
choose  the  diiHcult  way  of  patriotism  rather  than 
the  readier  way  of  relying  upon  old  catchwords 
and  hatreds  ?  Some  of  the  younger  Presbyterian 
ministers  are  beginning  to  respond  to  the  new 
influences,  just  as  are  some  of  the  younger  Catholic 
priests,  and  both  among  the  clergy  and  the 
laity  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  growing  murmurs 
are  to  be  heard  aofaiust  the  ofiicial   Church  collec- 

O 

tion  of  money  for  the  proselytisation  of  Irish 
Catholics.  I  met  a  Presbyterian  of  some  weight 
the  other  day  who  refuses  to  put  even  a  penny 


THE  ULSTERMANS  NOTORIETY  171 

in  the  plate  ou  the  day  oq  which  this  collection 
is  made. 

Nor  are  the  members  of  the  disestablished 
Protestant  Church  remaining  aloof  from  the 
new  patriotic  movement  towards  unity.  One  of 
the  sanest  and  most  charitable  influences  in  his 
own  sphere  in  Ireland  to-day  is  the  witty  and 
brilliant  Protestant  Episcopal  clergyman,  who 
writes  novels  under  the  pseudonym  of  George 
A.  Birmingham. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE    IRISH    GENTRY 

In  Ireland,  according  to  a  cliaracter  of  Mr  Shaw's, 
there  is  only  one  class  distinction  :  either  you  are 
a  gentleman  or  you  are  not.  Mr  Shaw — or  his 
character — is  not  quite  right.  The  landed  gentry 
give  us  a  sort  of  upper  class,  as  the  professions 
and  the  shop-keepers  give  us  a  sort  of  middle 
class,  in  Ireland.  Tlie  Irish  uj)per  class,  however, 
plays  a  smaller  part  in  the  social  and  progressive 
life  of  the  nation  than  the  upper  class  in  almost 
any  other  country  in  the  world.  Irish  gentlemen 
as  individuals  arc  among  the  ballad-glorious 
heroes  of  the  nation  :  the  Irish  gentry  as  a  class 
arc,  from  Ireland's  point  of  view,  one  of  llie  most 
worthless  aristocracies  in  history. 

The  ordinary  Irish  gentleman  who  can  afford 
to  do  so  lives  largely  out  of  Ireland.  As  a  boy, 
he  goes  to  an  English  school :  as  a  young  man  he 
plays  at  an  Englisii  University,  or  becomes  an 
officer  in  the  English  army.  When  he  is  at  home 
he  lives  as  completely  aloof  from  his  people  as 
though  he  were  a  foreigner  treading  conquered 
ground.  His  estate  is  not  a  thing  in  which  he 
takes  any  interest  apart  from  the   tril)ute  which 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  173 

he  can  exact  from  it.  The  people  do  not  see  him 
at  their  churches;  they  do  not  find  him  on  their 
platforms  at  political  meetings  ;  he  does  not  even 
lend  his  presence  to  their  festivals  of  song  and 
language  revival,  their  b^eiscanna — those  delightful 
rocrcalors  of  the  sociid  life  of  Ireland.  J^ehind 
the  rent-collecting  agent  and  the  rent-defending 
policeman  he  stands,  a  hostile  force,  believing  in 
no  justice  save  the  justice  which  gives  him  as 
much  money  as  he  can  get  for  his  land,  believing 
in  no  liberty  save  the  liberty  to  leave  his  country 
a  little  poorer  than  he  found  it,  and  to  subject  the 
interests  of  an  entire  people  to  his  own.  His 
relations  with  his  tenants  have  no  sanction  of 
human  feeling.  He  never  helped  to  build  a  house 
or  an  out-house  on  one  of  his  farms ;  his  presence 
never  encouraged  a  farmer  to  drain  a  field,  but 
rather  to  leave  it  undrained  ;  to  build  a  wall,  but 
rather  to  leave  it  unbuilt.  People  stdl  tell  how 
he  once  forbade  even  the  erection  of  cottages  for 
labourers  on  the  farms  on  his  estate.  Remember- 
ing that  death,  old  age,  and  other  accidents  have 
a  way  of  suddenly  plunging  labourers'  families 
into  pauperism,  he  looked  on  labourers  as  mere 
potential  burdens  on  the  poor  rate  which  came  so 
largely  out  of  his  own  pocket.  His  "  crowbar 
brigade" — the  band  of  hired  men  who  went 
round  his  estate  with  their  crowbars  and  levelled 
cottage  after  cottage  to  the  ground — is  one  of  the 
picturesque  evil  memories  of  Irish  nineteenth- 
century  history. 


174       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

Apart  from  bis  treatment  of  his  country  and 
his  tenants,  the  Irish  landlord  oiight  not  to  be 
looked  upon  as  a  monster  of  the  vices.  "  Is  he  a 
good  landlord  ? "  a  friend  of  mine  asked  an  old 
man  going  up  Croaghpatrick  one  day  about  a 
gentleman  in  the  neighbourhood.  "  I  have  never 
heard  tell  of  a  good  landlord,"  the  countryman 
replied  with  a  kind  of  humour ;  "  it's  a  bad 
trade."  Whatever  the  evils  of  his  trade  may  be, 
however,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  landlord 
is  a  vital  and  courageous  figure,  as  the  record  of 
himself  and  his  sons  as  soldiers  in  the  British 
army  bears  witness;  and  if  he  has  been  un- 
scru|)ul(>us  in  his  dealings  with  his  tenants,  it 
is  because  Ireland  bus  for  long  been  really  in  a 
state  of  war,  and  he  looked  on  tiiose  who  challenged 
him  as  his  enemies  not  merely  in  person  but 
in  principle.  He  could  work  himself  into  a 
moral  hatred  of  them  as  the  enemies  of  religious 
liberty,  of  social  order,  of  the  English  throne,  of 
everything  he  honours  in  his  conventional  phrases. 
His  imagination  could  not  grasp  tlie  point  of 
view  of  the  other  side.  To  him  it  simply  meant 
anarchy  and  uncleanuess.  It  meant,  too,  it  must  be 
remembered,  the  overthrow  of  his  sons'  chances  in 
the  world  and  of  the  security  of  his  daughters' 
social  well-being.  He  fought  as  cruelly  as  men 
always  fight  for  their  families. 

Ireland  has  lost  much  by  the  absence  of 
her  aristocrats  from  her  councils  and  from  the 
centres    of  her   national    life.     She    has   lost  the 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  175 

lielp  of  liundreds  of  men,  unsurpassed  as  fighters, 
with  high  gifts  of  organisation  and  leadership, 
unbending  in  trutlifulness,  passionately  honour- 
n.l)]c  nion  as  lionour  is  generally  understood  among 
aristocracies.  It  is  a  question,  however,  if  the 
Irish  gentry  have  not  lost  still  more.  Tliey  have 
lived  in  a  little  narrow  world  of  bitterness,  when 
they  might  have  been  a  part  of  a  large  and  joyous 
struggle  towards  the  making  of  a  civilisation.  They 
have  experienced  all  the  pleasures  of  hunting  and 
shooting,  of  eating  and  drinking,  of  comfort  and 
the  company  of  handsome  men  and  women,  but 
they  are  like  people  who  go  through  one  of  the 
wonderful  places  of  the  world  in  a  closed  carriage 
with  the  blinds  pulled  down.  They  do  not  know 
the  music  of  tlie  hills  and  the  lakes  among  which 
they  live,  or  the  stories,  or  the  histories.  They 
miglit  have  Ix'.en  \]\o  hs'idcrs  of  ;i,  nation  :  tliey  iiw. 
no  better  than  touiists  in  their  own  country,  and, 
unlike  tourists,  they  are  not  an  expending  but  an 
expensive  institution.  Mr  Standish  O'Grady  has 
pronounced  their  epitaph  in  one  of  the  most  im- 
pressive passages  I  know  in  contemporary  literature. 
"Aristocracies,"  he  has  written,  "come  and  go 
like  the  waves  of  the  sea  ;  and  some  fall  nobly 
and  others  ignobly.  As  T  write,  this  Protestant 
Anglo-Irish  aristocracy,  which  once  owned  all 
Ireland  from  the  centre  to  the  sea,  is  rotting  from 
the  land  in  the  most  dismal  farce-tragedy  of  all 
time,  without  one  brave  deed,  without  one  brave 
word. 


176       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

"  Our  last  Irish  aristocracy  was  Catholic, 
intensely  and  fanatically  Royalist  and  Cavalier, 
and  compounded  of  elements  which  were  Norman- 
Irish  and  Milesian-Irish.  They  worshipped  the 
Crown  when  the  Crown  had  become  a  phantom 
or  a  ghost,  and  the  god  whom  they  worshipped 
was  not  able  to  save  them  or  himself.  Tiiey  were 
defeated  and  exterminated.  They  lost  everything, 
but  they  did  not  lose  honour  ;  and  because  they 
did  not  lose  that,  their  overthrow  was  bewailed 
in  songs  and  music  which  will  not  cease  to  sound 
for  centuries  yet. 

"  *  Sliawn  O'Dwyer  a  Glaniia, 
We're  worsted  in  Liu;  ^Mriie.' 

"  Worsted  they  were  ;  for  they  made  a  fatal 
mistake,  and  they  had  to  go  ;  but  they  l^rought 
their  honour  with  them,  and  they  founded  noble 
and  ])rinccly  families  on  the  Continent, 

"Who  laments  the  destruction  of  our  ])resent 
Anglo-Irish  aristocracy  ?  Perhaps  in  broad 
Ireland  not  one.  They  fall  from  the  laud  while 
innumerable  eyes  are  dry,  and  their  fall  will  not 
be  bewailed  in  one  piteous  dirge  or  one  mournful 
melody." 

The  landlord  is  passing  now  with  a  swifter  sure- 
ness  than  ever,  as  a  result  of  Mr  AVyndham's  Laud 
Act,  and,  save  ::.  those  cases  where  he  is  meeting 
new  facts  with  a  new  attitude,  he  is  becoming 
more  and  more  an  isolated  figure,  living  behind 
high  walls  and  iron  gates.     The  richer  ones  cross 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  177 

to  England,  except  for  the  shooting  and  hunting 
seasons,  hut  the  poorer  ones  live  on  in  tlieir  old 
homes  like  a  kind  of  first-class  misdemeanants,  for 
their  homes  must  have  grown  something  of  a 
prison  to  tliem.  They  have  no  national  culture — 
very  little  of  any  sort  of  culture,  indeed— and  those 
of  them  who  have  intellect  must  find  their  sur- 
roundings at  times  almost  insupportable. 

One  hears  a  good  deal  about  the  gay  and  rollick- 
ing Irish  gentleman,  but  I  do  not  think  the  Irish 
gentleman  is  now  half  so  gay  or  half  so  rollicking 
as  he  was  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
when  it  is  said  he  used  to  mix  with  the  boys  of  the 
countryside  on  the  liurliug-field.  To  the  older 
sort  of  landlord,  indeed,  Ireland  must  now  be  one 
broad  valley  of  bitterness  and  humiliation.  There 
is  a  titled  landlord  in  the  south,  who  in  the 
old  d;iys  us(m1  to  keep  liis  tcuiaiits  standing  bare- 
headed for  hours  in  the  rain  on  days  on  which  they 
came  to  pay  their  rents.  He  put  them  even  to  the 
indignity  of  taking  off  their  boots  before  he  would 
allow  them  to  come  into  his  rent-office.  Lately, 
he  entered  into  negotiations  with  them  with 
regard  to  the  sale  of  his  land,  and  made  an  appoint- 
ment for  a  conference  with  them  in  a  hotel  in  a 
neighbouring  market-town.  On  the  appointed 
day,  the  tenants  held  a  preliminary  meeting  in 
the  hotel  to  discuss  what  terms  they  should  offer, 
and  while  the  meeting  was  in  progress  the  land- 
lord arrived,  and  sent  in  word  that  he  was  ready. 
The  chairman  of  the  meeting  sent  back  a  message 

M 


]78       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

that  if  Lord  So-and-so  would  call  back  iu  about 
three-quarters-of-an-hour  tlioy  would  be  })repared 
to  receive  him.  That  scene,  even  if  you  have  not 
much  imagination,  will  enable  you  to  realise  the 
measure  of  the  revolution  that  is  changing  the 
face  and  the  character  of  Ireland. 

Far  as  the  Irish  gentry  have  lived  out  of  the 
main  stream  of  the  national  life,  however,  Ireland 
has  given  them  a  definitely  Irish  character  in  more 
ways  than  one.  Irish  gentry  are  difierent  from 
the  gentry  of  other  countries.  No  one  could  have 
mistaken  Colonel  Saunderson  for  anything  but  an 
Irishman,  and  Lord  Charles  Beresford  has  eifaracter- 
istics  as  essenlially  Irish  as  though  he  had  been 
a  Nationalist  from  his  birth.  Colonel  Saunderson 
had  the  traditional  high  spirits  of  his  class,  and 
his  instinct  for  practical  joking  went  so  far  that 
once,  when  some  English  guests  came  to  visit  him 
at  his  home,  he  drove  them  from  the  railway- 
station  to  the  hous(5  at  a  broaknec'lc  gallop  on  a 
jaunting-cai-,  and  had  i)igs  running  ahoutllic  house 
when  he  arrived,  so  that  they  might  not  be  disap- 
pointed in  any  of  their  prejudices.  It  may  have 
been  a  Lever-and-Lover  kind  of  humour,  but  Lever 
and  Lover,  exaggerated  as  many  of  their  i>agesare, 
reflected  at  least  one  side  of  the  Irish  character — 
its  exuberance,  its  recklessness,  its  hospitality. 

I  think  myself  that  the  Irish  gentleman  some- 
times assumes  this  recklessness  and  exuberance  to 
a  degree  far  beyond  what  is  natural  to  him.  Going 
to  England,  he  finds  that  a  certain  conception  of 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  179 

the  Irish  character  exists  among  the  English  people, 
and  that  he  can  make  himself  popular  with  the  help 
of  a  few  extravagant  tricks  and  stories.  Accord- 
ingly, he  begins  to  behave  as  he  never  behaved  in 
Ireland,  and  sometimes  even  puts  a  dash  of  brogue 
into  his  s})cecli  which  had  never  been  noticeable 
before.  Luckily  the  "stage  Irishman  "  has  been 
discredited  of  late  years,  and  so  the  real  Irishman 
no  longer  finds  it  desirable  to  make  caricatures  of 
himself  for  the  amusement  of  strangers. 

George  ]\l(M'cdith  had  evidently  met  the  "stage 
Irishman "  before  he  invented  the  character  of 
Mr  Sullivan  Smith  in  "  Diana  of  the  Crossways." 
"  There  are  Irishmen  and  Irishmen,"  declares  the 
wise  lied  worth  in  a  comment  on  Mr  Sullivan  Smith. 
"  I've  met  cool  heads  and  long  heads  among  them, 
and  you  and  I  knew  Jack  Derry,  who  was  good  at 
most  things.  But  the  burlesque  Irishman  can't 
be  caricatured.  Nature  strained  herself  in  a  fit  of 
absurdity  to  produce  him,  and  all  that  Art  can  do 
is  to  copy. "  The  absurdity  of  the  "  stage  Irishman," 
however,  is  not  always  the  work  of  Nature. 
It  is  often,  as  I  have  suggested,  a  characteristic 
acquired  by  assiduous  labour,  like  a  knowledge  of 
Latin  or  ease  in  dancing.  It  is  as  frequently  con- 
scious as  it  is  unconscious.  It  is  an  abuse  of  the 
racial  comic  and  dramatic  instinct  which  gave  so 
many  fine  comic  playwrights  to  English  literature — 
Sheridan,  Oscar  Wilde,  and  Mr  Bernard  Shaw,  to 
name  no  others.  Where  it  is  unconscious,  it  is  an 
expression  of  denationalisation,  like   the    English 


180       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

writing  of  a  Babu.  Ireland  trying  to  express  itself 
in  the  English  way  is  bound  to  have  its  ridiculous 
and  grotesque  side,  just  as  India  trying  to  express 
itself  in  an  English  way  is  bound  to  have  its 
grotesque  and  ridiculous  side.  It  may  be  argued 
that  the  Irish  gentleman — I  use  the  word  in  the 
technical  sense  all  through  this  chapter — is  usually 
a  colonist  from  England,  and  that  tlierefore  this  rule 
does  not  ap[)ly  to  liim.  Every  one  knows,  on  tlic 
other  hand,  that  no  family,  English  or  otherwise, 
can  live  even  for  a  single  generation  in  Ireland 
without  becomino-  in  some  decree  Irish.     Enorlaud 

o  o  o 

vainly  passed  laws  again  and  again  to  prevent  the 
colonists  from  becoming  Irishised.  Tim  tragedy  of 
the  landlords,  like  the  tragedy  of  the  people  of 
Ulster,  is  that  they  could  not  be  altogether  Eng- 
lish, and  would  not  be  altogether  Irish. 

The  Irish  gentleman,  now  that  the  land  war  has 
lost  its  indecisiveness,  and,  with  tliat,  much  of  its 
bitterness,  is  changing.  In  many  parts  of  the 
country  we  sec  him  making  advances  towards  the 
people,  attempting  to  get  at  their  point  of  view, 
to  help  them  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  social 
life,  the  industrial  life,  the  intellectual  life  of  the 
country.  All  intelligent  Ii'islimi^n  know  of  the 
splendid  work  done  in  Kilkenny  by  (Japtaiu 
Otway  Culfe,  l)rother  of  the  Earl  of  Desart. 
Kilkenny  has  now  a  woollen  mill,  a  furniture 
industry,  and  a  little  national  theatre,  and  Captain 
Cufie  has  lately  been  standing  on  (Jaelic  League 
platforms,  speaking  in  support  of  essential  Irish  in 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  181 

the  National  University.  Lord  Dunraveu  has 
definitely  made  his  confession  of  faith  in  nationality, 
and  Lord  Monteagle  has  helped  in  the  building  of 
the  new  Ireland  around  his  own  home.  Lord 
Castlctow!!  passionately  advocates  tlic  revival  of 
the  Irish  laiigunge,  ajul  C;)|)tain  Sliawe-'I'aylor  is 
only  one  of  many  of  his  class  who  have  taken  part 
in  the  present  reawakening  of  the  national  self- 
consciousness.  The  Protestant  Bishop  of  Clogher 
has  urged  tlic  people  of  his  church  to  establish  a 
kindofTrotestant  Gaelic  League.  Colonel  l^^verard 
has  planted  the  tobacco-growing  industry  in 
Ireland.  Elsewhere  we  have  a  country  gentleman 
thinking  out  the  railway  problem  from  the  national 
point  of  view,  and  Mr  Archibald  Dobbs,  a  de- 
scendant of  the  famous  industrial  Dobljs  of  the 
Irish  Parliament  of  the  eighteenth  century,  has 
been  worlcing  at  a  scheme  of  proportional  repre- 
sentation, so  that  minorities  in  Ireland  may  have 
no  fear  of  being  overwhelmed.  Over  the  country 
there  are  a  hundred  signs  that  the  Irish  gentry 
are  taking  a  vital  interest  in  their  country,  such  as 
they  have  not  taken  since  the  days  of  Grattan  and 
Lord  Cliarlemont  and  Lord  Edward  Fitzgerald. 
Only  the  other  day,  Lord  Iveagh's  paper,  "  The 
Outlook,"  spoke  in  admiration  of  the  industrial 
side  of  the  Sinn  Fdin  policy,  and  we  may  presume 
that  Lord  Iveagh  himself  would  stand  by  this 
statement  of  opinion.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  co- 
operative movement  has  had  numerous  and  en- 
thusiastic supporters  among  the  landed  gentry  and 


182       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

the  industrial  leaders  of  the  country ;  and  Sir 
Horace  Plunkett's  movement,  pliilosopliically  con- 
sidered, is  only  a  part  of  the  general  nation-l)uilding 
effort  which  is  every  day  finding  new  expressions, 
new  outlets,  in  all  manner  of  people  and  all  manner 
of  places. 

I  do  not  think  then  that  the  Irish  aristocracy  is 
going  to  perish  without  hope  of  a  l)lessed  resurrec- 
tion. Tlie  Irish  landlord  has  sinned  against 
Ireland  as  the  Irish  farmer  has,  as  the  Irish  priest 
has,  as  the  Irisli  Protestant  has,  as  the  Irish 
industrialist  has — all  of  them  in  different  ways, 
and  in  different  degrees.  AVe  see  at  the  present 
moni(3i)t  I  he  l)(!gi linings,  as  il,  were,  of  a  great  act 
of  national  re[)entanc(',  in  wliich  Irish  men  and 
women  of  all  creeds  and  classes  arc  taking  part. 
We  are  as  yet  only  in  the  first  day  of  things. 
Misunderstandings,  bigotries,  still  fill  the  air  with 
their  echoes,  and  make  the  condition  of  the  country 
seem  much  more  desperate  tiian  it  is.  Hopes, 
however,  are  continually  challenging  and  defeating 
fears. 

I  find  I  have  left  out  of  account  in  this  chapter 
the  Irish  woman  of  the  aristocratic  classes.  This 
is  unfair,  because  for  every  man  in  those  classes 
who  is  now  taking  an  elfe(itiv(!  interest,  in  Ireland 
you  will  prol)ably  find  two  women  doing  the  same 
thing.  Irish  clothes,  Irish  music,  Irish  dancing, 
are  beginning  to  have  even  a  fashionable  reputa- 
tion. Many  of  these  ladies,  of  course,  were  never 
regardless    of   the   people   around    them,   and   the 


THE  IRISH  GENTRY  183 

people  have  spoken  kindly  of  them  in  return. 
The  bad  landlord  was  a  fact,  and  politicians  made 
it  appear  as  though  he  were  the  only  fact  in  Irish 
landlordism.  But  there  have  always  been  excep- 
tions to  tlic  rule  of  badness,  and  the  more  human 
and  generous  side  of  the  landed  class  is  now  con- 
stantly asserting  itself— asserting  itself  through 
the  energies  of  the  women,  I  think,  more  usually 
even  than  among  the  men.  The  peoj^le,  I  believe, 
will  not  long  har))our  their  old  grudges,  if  they 
are  apj)roach('d  in  the  si)irit  of  friendship  and  not 
of  patronage.  "  Ah,  why  would  we  speak  ill  of 
them?  Bad  luck  follows  them,"  said  an  old 
countryman  lately,  speaking  about  the  landlords 
of  his  part  of  the  country.  That  is  not  an  un- 
common attitude  among  the  people.  They  have 
no  desire  to  see  their  ancient  enemies  thrust  from 
their  mansions  and  their  woods.  They  neither 
hate  lords  nor  love  them  so  much  as  is  generally 
and  contradictorily  supposed. 


CHAPTER  X 

TOWN    LIFE,    WITH    A    NOTE    ON    PUBLIC    LIFE 

Some  of  tlie  Irish  towns  are  the  plainest — I  will 
not  say  the  ugliest — you  could  desire.  At  the 
head  of  the  towns,  however,  stand  a  number  of 
cities  of  distinguished  beauty  —  Dul)lin  and 
Limerick  and  (jJalway,  to  name  no  others.  Dublin 
with  its  wide  central  street,  its  statues  and  its 
time-darkened  buildings,  has  a  dignity  su(;h  as 
one  associates  with  some  of  the  southern  towns  in 
the  United  States — a  dignity  of  memories  and  of 
manners.  Its  squares,  its  railed-in  areas,  its  flights 
of  steps,  its  tall  houses  of  bi-ick  richly-coloured 
as  wine,  give  it  the  air  of  a  splendid  relic  of  the 
eighteenth  century.^     It  is  unforgettably  a  capital. 

'  The  first  volume  of  au  interesting  book  about  Dublin  has 
lately  been  published  by  the  Georgian  Society.  Its  object  is  to 
leave  a  permanent  record  of  the  beautiful  houses  decorated  during 
Ireland's  luxurious  period — 1782-1800.  It  is  mainly  made  up  of 
reproductions  of  carvings  in  plaster,  wood  and  stune,  wliich,  as 
exami)les  of  pseudo-classic  art,  are  uneijualled,  and  in  addition  it 
contains  a  note  giving  the  names  of  the  occupiers  in  the  more  im- 
portant streets  from  1798  to  tlie  present  day.  Many  of  these  fine 
and  polished  liomes  are  now  among  tlie  worst  tenements  in  the 
city,  and  are  being  dismantled  and  their  treasures  sold  in  England. 
Others  have  long  Ijeen  tlie  liead(juarters  of  jirofcssional  men,  and 
Irishmen  of  taste  have  begun  to  regard  them  as  possessicjiis  to  be 
coveted. 


TOWN  LIFE  185 

Soldiers  appear  and  reappear  like  monotouous  red 
toys,  under  the  shadow  of  the  low  classic  temple 
that  is  now  the  Bank  of  Ireland,  but  that  once  was 
the  Irish  Parliament  House.  It  is  as  though  they 
were  there  in  temporary  occupation  :  the  Parliament 
Jlousc  h;is  ail  air  of  permanency,  of  solemn  patience, 
tliat  makes  them  look  like  impudent  unrealities. 
Opposite  to  it  stands  Trinity  College  with  its  dingy 
walls — fortress  in  chief  of  the  strong  masterful 
colonists,  against  which  wave  upon  wave  of  the 
national  desire  has  beaten  and  broken,  leaving  its 
tide-marks  as  upon  an  old  rock.  Dublin,  indeed, 
is  a  kind  of  ambiguous  ca[)ital,  the  capital  partly 
of  a  colony,  partly  of  a  nation  ;  it  never  decided 
which.  It  is  not  without  significance  that  the 
far-famed  Dublin  Castle  is  not  much  more  notice- 
able in  the  scliemc  of  the  city  than  a  shop  in  a 
back  street.  The  Dublin  that  impresses  itself 
upon  the  eye  and  the  imagination  is  the  Dublin 
of  the  Parliament  House  and  Trinity  College,  the 
Dublin  of  the  Anglo-Irish  colony  and  the  Irish 
nation  strugsjlinof  tlirough  centuries  to  its  birth. 

Belfast,  with  its  industrial  clamour,  its  new  red 
brick  that  screams  at  you,  and  its  electric  trams 
that  fly  faster  than  the  trams  anywhere  else,  re- 
presents by  comparison  the  rush  of  the  nineteenth 
century  into  Ireland.  It  is  the  nineteenth-century 
in  youth,  however,  not  in  decadence.  Belfast  has 
made  itself  hastily,  too  hastily,  and  when  it  lies 
silent  through  the  fear  of  God  on  the  morning  of 
the  seventh  day,  you  see  that  it  is  as  yet  an  in- 


186       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

dustrial  campand  not  a  city.  .  .  .  Ft  will  he  ])ullc<l 
down  one  of  these  days,  and  ])uilt  afresh  \)y  people 
wlio  love  it  too  well  to  leave  it  like  a  junihle  of 
jerry-building  in  a  Held.  It  has  too  many  of  the 
elements  of  beauty  both  in  its  situation  and  in 
its  people  to  remain  permanently  a  discord  in  the 
side  of  Ulster.  Spread  beneath  its  hills  and  along 
the  low  shores  of  its  windy  lough,  it  has  a  bust- 
ling popuhation  of  men  who  are  at  onc(i  militant 
and  emotional,  and  of  women  with  a  liigh  average 
of  determination  and  good  looks.  It  seems  to  me 
indeed  to  lack  only  one  thing  in  order  to  be  a 
great  city  :  it  lacks  that  healthy  nationality  which 
is  synonymous  with  taste.  Its  pco})le  have  a 
promising  gladness  in  s[)ite  of  the  gloom  of  its 
conflicting  churches.  They  arc  idealists,  for  they 
would  drop  all  their  worldly  interests  any  day  to 
fight,  some  of  them  for  a  green  flag,  some  of  them 
for  an  orange  banner.  1  do  not  mean  that  the 
town  is  not  full  of  quiet  people  who  would  not 
fight  for  any  cause  whatsoever.  AVhat  gives 
Belfast  its  distinction  among  cities,  however,  is 
the  strain  of  almost  savage  idealism  that  runs  in 
the  veins  of  the  people.  I  call  the  idealism  savage, 
because  it  has  never  been  given  a  soul  by  the 
churches,  or  an  intellect  by  the  schools  and  colleges. 
Belfast  has  grown  up  like  a  child  whose  parents 
died  in  its  infancy,  and  the  jerry-builders  and  the 
catchword  orators  have  taken  merciless  advantage 
of  it. 

Limerick    is   in    some    ways   like    a    miniature 


TOWN  LIFE  187 

Dul)lin.  Just  as  iu  Dublin  the  main  tliorouglifare 
is  called  O'Conuell  Street  by  the  Irish  and  Sack- 
ville  Street  by  other  people,  so  in  Limerick  the 
main  thoroughfare  is  called  O'Councll  Street  by 
the  Irish  and  George  Street  by  everybody  else. 
In  both  cities  you  can  almost  tell  a  man's  politics 
by  the  way  in  which  he  names  these  streets.^  As 
regards  the  appearance  of  Limerick,  Thackeray, 
in  his  rather  useless  book  on  Ireland,  declares  that 
at  first  sight  you  are  "  half  led  to  believe  that  you 
arc  arrived  in  a  second  Liverpool,  so  tall  arc  the 
warcliouses  and  broad  the  quays  :  so  neat  and  trim 
a  street  of  near  a  mile  which  stret(;hes  before 
you."  It  is,  as  he  saw,  an  idle  Liverpool,  however. 
Its  quiet  warehouses  and  its  deserted  quay-sides 
give  you  (In;  scnsatioiiM  you  might  feel  if  you  had 
conH!  suddenly  upon  the  forgotten  ])ala,(io  of  some 
Sleeping  Lcauty.  Looking  over  the  bridge  by  the 
ruined  castle  in  the  evening,  you  see  a  river  of 
lights  as  wonderful  as  the  Thames  between  West- 
minster Bridge  and  St  Paul's  after  nightfall,  but 
it  is  the  Thames  of  a  distant  enchanted  country — 
the  Thames  seen  in  an  exquisite  revealing  mirage. 
In  the  day-time  O'Connell  Street  is  filled  with  fine- 

1  This  is  much  less  the  case  in  Limerick  than  in  Dublin. 
O'Connell  Bridge  in  Dublin  used  to  be  called  Carlisle  Bridge,  and 
loyalists  fought  for  the  old  name  as  though  it  were  a  symbol  of 
their  religious  faith.  One  loyal  gentleman  used,  whenever  he  was 
driving  across  the  Bridge,  to  ask  the  carman  in  an  innocent  tone 
what  it  was  called.  If  tlie  caiman  answered,  as  he  usually  did, 
"O'Connell  Bridge,  sir,"  the  fare  would  say,  as  if  driving  home 
a  needed  lesson  in  loyalty,  "  Ilumpli,  if  you  had  said  'Carlisle 
Bridge,'  I  would  have  given  you  another  sixpence  ! " 


188       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

looking  people  who  know  how  to  dress,  going 
leisurely  about  in  earriages,  in  motor-cars,  and  on 
foot,  and  jaunting-cars  wait  idly  at  the  street- 
corners  for  their  fares.  Limerick  has  its  own 
fashion  and  its  own  elegance.  It  belongs  to  a 
civilisation  before  trams  were  invented  or  tea-shops 
thought  of.  It  is  the  stateliest  city  of  its  size  I 
know,  and  built  upon  the  stateliest  river. 

Galway  is  more  essentially  a  city  in  ruins  than 
any  I  have  ever  beheld.  It  is  a  grey  city,  a  city 
of  noble  walls  and  narrow  streets,  with  the  winds 
of  the  sea  blowing  into  its  mouth  and  remindinor 
it  ever  of  the  days  when  it  sent  forth  its  mer- 
chant ships  into  deep  waters,  and  Spanish  captains 
brought  theii"  wares  to  its  cpiays.  Culway  has  710 
main  street  of  fashion  and  elei^ance.  its  ware- 
houses,  its  ruinous  mills,  give  it  the  appearance 
of  a  city  that  has  been  shelled  and  sacked  by  an 
invader.  These  warehouses  and  mills  were  built 
on  a  palatial  scale,  and  even  in  j'uin  they  are  noble  : 
by  moonlight  they  have  a  marble  grandeur.  A 
sleepy  horse-tram  with  its  sleepy  bell  winds  along 
one  of  the  streets,  as  though  apologising  for  its 
almost  modern  intrusiveness.  The  Claddagh  village 
by  the  harbour,  with  its  coloured  cottages  under 
their  grotesque  depths  of  thatch  and  its  fishing 
population  in  their  jerseys  and  shawls,  helps  to  give 
Galway  the  appearance  of  the  most  distinctively 
Irish  city  in  Ireland.  On  fair  days,  too,  the  Cou- 
uemara  people  pour  into  the  market  square  in 
their  white  woollen  jackets  and  their  black  tam- 


TOWN  LIFE  189 

o'-slianters,  and  the  air  is  nob  fuller  of  the  shrieks 
of  pigs  and  the  protesting  roar  of  cattle  than  of  the 
rich  tiow  of  Gaelic  so  expressive  in  gossip  and  in 
bargaining.  Some  of  the  sho[)3  of  the  city  have 
the  names  of  the  proprietors  written  above  the 
windows  in  Irish — as  the  sho})S  have,  indeed,  in  a 
growing  number  of  towns  and  villages.  In  some 
of  them  you  can  buy  all  you  want  without  any 
need  to  resort  to  the  use  of  English  at  all. 

T  cannot  go  tlirough  the  catalogue  of  the  Irish 
cities  and  towns,  however,  though  1  do  not  like  to 
pass  without  speaking  of  Cork  which  I  have  not  seen 
and  Derry  which  I  have  seen,  and  twenty  others. 
As  for  the  smaller  towns  and  villages,  these  are 
for  the  most  part  market  towns,  and  have  neither 
industrial  life  nor  dignity  save  in  the  beauty  of 
the  situation  of  many  of  them.  They  (jonsist 
largely  of  churches  of  the  various  denominations, 
drapers'  shops,  public-houses,  a  hotel  or  two,  a 
post-office,  and  a  police-barracks.  To  a  stranger, 
a  small  Irish  town  may  often  seem  at  first  sight 
to  be  merely  a  collection  of  public-houses,  but  this 
is  because  a  public-house  in  an  Irish  country-town 
is  very  difi:erent  from  what  it  is  elsewhere.  It  is 
commonly  a  general  store  with  a  license  to  sell 
beer  and  whiskey.  The  farmer  who  goes  marketing 
does  not  like  to  have  to  go  from  shop  to  shop 
looking  for  what  he  wants.  He  prefers  to  get 
everything  so  liir  as  Ik;  can  at  tlu?  same  [»l;u'.c,  and 
tjjc  phu^e  always  linds  it  worth  its  while  to  sell  him  a 
glass  of  whiskey  as  he  is  making  his  purchases,     in 


190       HOJNIE  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

addition  to  his  glass  of  wliiskey,  however,  he  may 
get  his  meat,  his  coal,  his  groceries,  his  seed, 
peppermint  dro})S  for  his  wife,  and  lialf-a-dozen 
other  things,  in  the  same  shop.  Jn  progressive 
towns,  the  publicans  are  more  inclined  to  make 
their  trade  a  drink  trade  pure  and  simple  ;  but  in 
towns  like  these  the  spirit-grocery  is  much  too 
common,  and  has  long  been  recognised  as  a  curse 
because  of  the  extent  to  which  it  leads  to  drinking 
among  women. 

On  an  ordinary  week-day  the  country-town  is 
one  of  the  most  deserted  and  indolent-looking 
places  in  the  world.  Ireland  is,  so  far  as  most  of 
the  towns  are  concerned,  a  nation  of  shoplceepers, 
and,  as  there  is  often  no  industrial  life  to  keep  tlie 
place  busy  from  hour  to  hour,  it  is  surprising  that 
the  people  have  kept  any  capacity  for  work  at  all. 

Every  town  has  its  share  of  men  hanging 
over  bridges  and  leaning  against  walls,  and 
women  standing  in  the  doors  and  busily  watch- 
ing nothing  happen.  It  is  not  that  lli(iy  are  boi'u 
lazy  but  that  they  are  bred  lazy.  There  is 
nothinir  for  them  to  do,  and  there  will  not  l)e 
anything  for  them  to  do  until  Irishmen  begin, 
among  other  things,  to  invest  their  savings,  not  in 
the  Post-OlHce  Savings  l^ank,  but  in  Irish  in- 
dustrial enterprises.  Some  peo}jle  talk  as  though 
the  increase  in  the  Irish  Savings  Bank  deposits 
is  a  sign  of  great  prosperity.  It  is  not  entirely 
so.  It  shows  chiefly  a  terrible  want  of  enter- 
prise  among  the  older  people,  and   a   refusal  to 


TOWN  LIFE  191 

raise  the  standard  of  living  as  it  has  been  raised 
in  other  civilised  countries.  The  low  standard  of 
living  and  the  dead  air  of  the  towns  and  the 
country-sides  have  resulted  in  sending  an  ever- 
increasing  proportion  of  the  population  to  [)lant 
cabbages  in  workhouse  gardens,  and  to  gibber 
behind  the  walls  of  lunatic  asylums. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  here  to  touch  upon 
the  injury  which  this  poverty  and  lifelessness  have 
done  to  tlie  character  of  the  people  in  a  few  parts 
of  the  country.  This  injury  is  noticeable  both  in 
the  poorest  towns  and  in  the  poorest  country-sides. 
It  appears  especially  in  the  corruption  of  their 
civic  and  corporate  life.  There  is  more  than  one 
Board  of  Poor  Law  Guardians,  for  instance, 
in  which  the  liiglicsL  a|)[»()inlmciil.H  jirc  |)rac,(i('jiJly 
for  sale.  No  doctor  can  hope  to  secure  a  dispen- 
sary under  boards  like  these  unless  he  has  bribed  a 
certain  number  of  the  guardians  before  the  election- 
day.  The  curious  thing  is  that  many  good  and 
honest  men — good  and  honest  in  the  ordinary 
affairs  of  life  —  accept  bribes  on  occasions  of 
this  sort.  They  hold,  I  suppose,  that  one  doctor 
is  practically  as  good  as  another,  and  that,  when 
money  is  flying  about,  they  might  as  well  have 
their  share  of  it,  like  a  clergyman  at  a  wedding. 
There  was  one  man  who  received  a  bribe  of  £10 
for  his  vote  in  a  dispensary  election,  and  was  after- 
wards sent  £15  by  a  second  candidate.  A  third 
candidate  then  approached  him  through  an  agent, 
and  was  so  anxiously  in  need  of  the  vote  that  he 


192       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

asked  the  man  to  put  his  own  price  on  it.  The 
guardian  named  the  price,  and  the  doctor  was 
temporarily  a  happy  man.  On  the  election-day, 
however,  the  guardian  shammed  a  sudden  and 
surprising  illness,  which  kept  him  in  bed  so  that 
he  could  not  cast  his  vote.  Of  course,  a  case  like 
this  would  be  exceptional  even  on  the  most  corrupt 
local  bodies.  It  is  pleasant  to  know,  too,  that  in 
the  most  prosperous  parts  of  Ulster,  Munster  and 
Connacht,  and  in  all  Leinster  briber}^  of  this  sort 
is  practically  unknown.  Corruption,  where  it 
exists  in  Dublin  and  Belfast  and  the  big  towns,  is 
of  another  kind.  It  is  the  less  easily  definable 
corruption  which  exists  where  men  enter  public 
life  in  order,  as  the  phrase  goes,  to  feather  their 
own  nests.  In  Dublin,  lately,  the  election  of  a 
number  of  Sinn  F(^iners  on  the  City  Council  is 
generally  admitted  to  have  made  wonderfully  for 
the  purification  of  public  life. 

Tlie  j)0verty  of  some  of  the  small  towns — the 
towns  that  arc  little  more  than  villages — lias,  I 
have  suggested,  been  responsible  for  a  good  deal 
of  the  corruption  of  which  1  have  spoken.  The 
extent  of  this  poverty  will  be  realised  by  anyone 
who  visits  one  of  the  towns  in  question  on  a 
Friday — the  day  on  which  the  old  age  pensions 
are  paid  out  at  the  post-ofiice.  Old  age  pension 
day  is  in  many  places  almost  as  busy  a  day  as 
market  day  itself.  It  is  certainly  busier  than  any 
other  day  in  the  week  but  that.  I  was  in  a  little 
town  in  the  south  of  Galway  recently  on  a  Friday, 


TOWN  LIFE  193 

and  I  beheld  a  spectacle  which  struck  me  as  most 
remarkable.  Along  all  the  roads  leading  to  the 
town,  old  men  and  women  came  jolting  in  on  their 
donkey  carts,  and  before  noon  the  carts  were  stand- 
ing in  a  sort  of  red-wheeled  regiment  in  the  market- 
square.  The  town  looked  almost  as  if  it  had  no 
inhabitants  younger  than  eighty.  Old  men  with 
wrinkled  hats  and  grey  whiskers  moved  about  the 
main  street  or  stood  within  the  door  of  a  public- 
house  fiUl  of  wealtli  niid  gossij).  Aged  women — 
some  of  tlicm  rlicumaiically  bent,  some  of  them 
girlishly  agile  on  their  feet — carried  their  baskets 
under  their  entangling  sliawls  from  shop  to 
shop,  Ijuying  here  a  pennyworth  of  pins  and 
there  a  packet  of  tea,  and  standing  still  every 
now  and  then  on  the  pavement  when  a  chance 
of  talk  arose.  The  town  was  murmurous 
with  old  people :  it  was  grotesque  and  crooked- 
looking  with  them.  Even  the  landlady  of  the 
nominal  hotel  in  which  I  lodged  was  an  old 
crumpled  women,  who  coughed  like  a  sheep  as  she 
went  about  the  deserted  rooms  of  her  high  relic  of 
a  house,  which  seemed  as  though  no  hand  had 
dusted  its  carpetless  stairs  or  its  cob  webbed  walls 
or  made  any  efforts  to  mend  its  creaking  doors 
since  the  old  days  when  the  military  were  quartered 
in  the  town,  and  gentlemen  pulled  up  for  a  meal  at 
the  hotel  as  they  posted  on  their  way  to  the  gaieties 
of  cities.  In  the  evening  a  half-aged  ballad-singer 
came  from  nowhere  into  the  empty  market- 
square — a  dirty-faced  and  ragged  man  who  looked 

N 


194       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

older  tlian  he  was— and  howled  songs  about  Robert 
Emmet  and  Irishmen  who  had  died  and  suffered  in 
other  ways,  and  I  went  over  and  bought  a  few  of 
his  ballads.  The  songs  he  sang  were  full  of  good 
memories,  but  the  town  heard  him  listlessly  from 
behind  its  small  dimly-lighted  windows.  It  was 
as  though  he  had  intruded  with  unnecessary 
patriotic  songs  into  the  porches  of  the  dead. 

Irish  towns,  on  the  other  hand,  vary  as  widely 
as  Irish  farms.  Most  of  them  have  sulficient  youth 
and  prosperity  to  enjoy  a  circus  or  a  cinemato- 
graph entertainment  now  and  tlien,  and  they  have 
even  an  appearance  of  buoyancy  and  colour  at 
the  time  of  a  Gaelic  League  Feis.  The  bank- 
clerks  and  tlie  shop-boys  have  boating-clul)s,  and 
an  Irish  regatta,  with  its  roulette  tables,  its  ballad- 
singers,  its  three-card  tricks,  its  booths  of  dulse 
and  yellow  man,  is  an  excitement  worth  living  to 
see.  Except  within  the  Gaelic  League  itself,  how- 
ever, there  is  far  too  mucli  social  narrowness  in 
some  of  the  towns.  There  is  commonly  one  social 
set  which  looks  down  on  Ireland  and  Irish  things  , 
there  are  shades  and  half-shades  of  respectability  ; 
"two-pence,"  as  the  saying  goes,  "looks  down 
on  three-halfpence " ;  and  there  is  an  amount  of 
cli(]uery  and  snobl)ery  which  is  uidcnowni  in  the 
country  places.  This  is  cliiefly  l)ecausc  no  healtliy 
wind  of  public  opinion,  or  national  opinion,  blows 
there.  You  have  only  to  meet  the  ordinary  type 
of  young  man  who  lives  in  a  smidl  town,  playing 
tennis  and  golf  and  despising  his  neighbours,  to 


TOWN  LIFE  195 

realise  bow  dull  and  empty  of  personality  Irish 
men  can  be  when  they  are  without  patriotism. 
They  have  plenty  of  physical  courage,  and  even 
of  the  family  virtues,  but  they  are  imitation  people 
without  any  delight  in  their  faces  or  colour  in 
their  lives.  They  arc  constantly  grumbling  about 
their  neighbours  and  their  surroundings,  and  if 
any  one  tries  to  do  anything  out  of  the  ordinary 
they  pour  contempt  and  suspicion  on  him  over 
their  meals  as  a  self-seeker  and  disturber  of  the 
peace.  These  young  men,  of  course,  were  educated 
on  lines  which  implied  that  Ireland  really  was 
a  country  to  keep  quiet  about,  and  so  they  are 
scarcely  to  be  blamed  for  having  grown  up  so 
uninterested  and  uninteresting.  You  could  not 
talk  with  one  of  them  for  half-an-hour,  however, 
without  realising  that  from  the  aesthetic  point  of 
view,  if  from,  no  other,  [)atriotism  is  one  of  the 
first  essentials  of  Irish  life.  Did  not  Aristotle  say 
that  it  was  the  end  of  education  to  make  men 
patriots  ?  He  would  have  been  doubly  confirmed 
in  his  opinion  if  he  had  listened  for  a  few  minutes 
to  the  conversation  of  the  superior  type  of  young 
Irish  townsman. 

I  have  already  said  that  the  circumstances  of 
town  life  vary  from  place  to  place.  Amid  their 
very  diflerenccs,  however,  all  Irish  towns  have  a 
sufficient  number  of  features  in  common.  The 
outside  cars  in  the  streets,  the  women  going  about 
in  their  shawls,  the  number  of  merry  barefoot 
children,  the  corner-boys  leaning  against  the  walls 


196       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

till  the  season  for  the  militia-traiuing  comes  round, 
the  gloom  and  strength  of  the  policemen's  figures 
going  up  and  down,  the  proprietorial  names  above 
the  public-houses,  and  twenty  other  things,  unite 
to  give  a  composite  picture  which  will  serve  for 
any   town.      I    deal    elsewhere   with  the  religion, 
the  sports,  the  food,  the  clothes  and  the  manners 
of  the  people.     With  regard   to  theatres  and   so 
forth,  it  may  be  mentioned   that  the  big  towns 
have  their  theatres  and  music  halls,  but  that,  with 
the  exception  of  the  Abbey  Theatre  in  Dublin, 
where  Mr  W.   B.   Yeats   and  his   fellow- workers 
have  inaugurated   a  beautiful  and  critical  school 
of    national    drama,    these    are    mere    ])ieces    of 
England    unnaturally    dumped    down    in    Ireland 
and  served  for  the  most  part  by  English  touring- 
companies.        The    Ulster    Literary    Theatre    in 
Belfast  is  an  institution,   not  a  building  ;    it  has 
already   produced   several   admirable    comedies   of 
Ulster    life.      Cork,   too,    has   adventured  success- 
fully in  the  production  of  national  drama,  and  in 
Galway — indeed,    everywhere    where    there    is    a 
GaelicLeague  centre — companies  have  been  brought 
together  from  time  to  time  for  the  performance 
of  short  plays  in  the  Irish  language.     The  Gaelic 
League  holds  an  annual  festival — the  Oireachtas — 
in  Dublin,  and  in  connection  with  this  a  number 
of    prizes   are   awarded    for   plays   in    Irish,    the 
winning  plays  being  performed  during  Oireachtas 
week.     As  for  the  art  of  painting,  the  recently- 
founded  Municipal  Art  Gallery  in  Duljlin  contains 


TOWN  LIFE  197 

a  collection  of  modem  European  masters — Monet, 
J\lanet,  Degas,  Manciui,  Corot,  and  others — which 
is  among  the  most  important  of  its  kind.  Ireland, 
however,  has  a  immber  of  native  artists  of  more 
than  Irisli  reputatioji — Mr  Nathaniel  Hone,  Mr 
George  llnsscll  (A.E.),  Mr  Orpen,  and  Mr  Jack 
Yeats,  to  name  no  others.  As  for  literature  and 
music,  I  hope  to  touch  upon  them  in  another 
chapter. 


CHAPTER   XI 

GAMES    AND    DANCES 

Ireland  is  almost  suflicicntly  ricli  in  native  games 
to  be  able  to  amuse  herself  without  importing 
from  abroad  any  games  at  all.  She  is  short  of 
light  summer  games,  indeed,  though  I  have  seen 
it  contended  that  both  tenuis  and  golf  are  games 
of  Irish  origin.  Dr  J.  P.  Henry  recently  dis- 
covered a  passage  in  the  old  heroic  literature, 
describing  a  game  played  by  Cuchullain,  and 
certainly  this  had  many  of  the  features  of  modern 
golf.  I  see  even  the  game  of  croquet  attril)uted 
to  Irish  invention  in  Mr  Woodgate's  wildisli  Ijook 
of  reminiscences.  I  do  not  know  what  grounds 
Mr  Woodf^ate  liad  for  niakiiiL!;  lliis  (■,liai-<'-e. 

The  distinctive  games  of  Ireland  to-day  are 
hurling  and  Gaelic  football.  Hurling  is  a  game 
with  some  resemblance  to  hockey,  and  until  re- 
cently it  was  popular  in  Protestant  Ulster  country- 
places  as  well  as  in  other  parts  of  Ireland.  It 
is  known  there  as  "cammon"  or  "shinty,"  and 
I  have  myself  played  it  with  other  boys  with  bits 
of  sticks  in  a  haggard.  Hurling  is  a  game  played 
between  teams  of  seventeen  men  a  side,  and  one 
of  the   main   ditferences  between    it    and   hockey 


GAMES  AND  DANCES  199 

is  that  the  hurler  is  not  forbidden  to  raise  his 
stick  his/her  tliau  his  shoukler  or  to  hit  with  both 
sides  of  the  stick.  A  hurler,  however,  will  tell 
you  that  hurling  is  as  different  from  hockey  as 
niglit  from  afternoon.  Besides  goal  -  posts  of 
ordinary  widtli,  tlicrc  are  two  wider  posts  out- 
side the  others,  and  when  tlie  ball  passes  l^etwecn 
these,  a  point  is  scored.  Three  points  are  equal 
to  one  goal.  The  player  is  allowed  to  catch  the 
ball  in  liis  liand,  but  is  not  allowed  to  lift  it 
from  the  ground  exc(>])t  on  the  [)oiiit  of  bis  hurley. 
The  game  is  rapid  and  vigorous,  and  is  said  to  be 
more  dangerous  for  tlic  inexperienced  than  for  tlie 
expert.  It  is  being  played  more  and  more  through- 
out the  country  every  day,  and  there  is  no  doubt 
that  it  deserves  to  be  popular  on  its  merits,  a])art 
from  .'dl  queslioM  of  fi.-i.tion.'d  H(Mitirneiil..  (J iris  pl;iy 
a  variety  of  liiitliiig  vmUvA  cani('>giiidh(!M,chL 

Irish  athletes  are  not  as  a  rule  so  positive  re- 
garding the  merits  of  Gaelic  football  as  they  are 
regarding  those  of  hurling.  I  have  heard  more 
than  one  of  them  declare  that,  though  Gaelic 
football  is  a  better  game  than  association,  it  is 
not  so  good  a  game  as  rugl)y,  It  would  bo  foolish 
for  an  unathletic  person  like  myself  to  oifer  any 
dogmatic  opinion  on  the  matter,  but  I  think 
Gaelic  football  could  be  mended  into  as  good  a 
game  as  any.  It  has  been  suggested  at  different 
times  that  it  would  be  a  more  exciting  game  if 
points  were  abolished  and  only  goals  allowed  to 
count  in  the  score,   for  the  point  system   exists 


200       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

here  as  in  hurling.  As  it  is,  however,  it  is  a  fine 
game  when  phayed  between  two  well-matched 
teams  of  seventeen  a  side.  It  may  be  deseribed 
as  a  catch-and-kick  game,  for  tlie  player  is  allowed 
to  catch  the  ball  and  to  bounce  it  before  kicking 
it,  but  not  to  hold  it  and  run  with  it. 

(laclic  football  and  hurbiig  arc  [)laycd  all  over 
Muuster  and  Leinster  and  in  the  Falls  Uoad 
district  of  Belfast,  Jhit  Connacht  is  a  province 
in  which,  for  some  reason  or  other,  the  old  Irish 
games  do  not  flourish  as  they  ought,  though,  of 
course,  even  here  they  are  played  in  some  places. 
Munster  seems  to  have  more  sporting  vigour  than 
any  of  the  other  provinces.  In  the  industrial  parts 
of  Ulster,  the  working  classes  play  association 
football  to  a  great  extent,  and  in  nearly  all  the 
large  towns  through  the  country  there  are  rugby 
clubs  for  the  middle-classes.  It  must  be  said  that 
the  rugby  game  has  been  nationalised  to  a  far 
greater  degree  than  association,  and  it  is  claimed 
that  the  game  as  played  in  Ireland  has  various 
distinctions  and  vii'tucs  when  contrasted  with  tiie 
rugby  football  of  other  countries. 

Cricket  has  never  aroused  much  interest  in 
Ireland  except  within  a  comparatively  narrow 
circle,  and  lacrosse,  at  wliich  the  counties  of  Antrim 
and  Down  excelled  for  a  good  nund)er  of  years, 
seems  now  to  be  dying  out  of  existence.  Lacrosse, 
by  the  way,  has  always  been  played  in  Ireland  as 
a  summer  game — not  as  a  winter  game,  according 
to  the  English  custom. 


GAMES  AND  DANCES  201 

Polo  is  a  favourite  game  with  the  wealthier 
classes,  aud  grounds  for  racing,  steeple-chasing 
and  jumping  are  plentiful  in  many  parts  of  the 
country.  Irishmen  are  all  supposed  to  l)e  good 
judges  of  a  liorse.  Certainly,  a  great  proportion 
of  country  gentlemen,  rich  farmers  and  professional 
men  are  enthusiasts  for  riding  and  hunting,  and 
the  mettle  of  Irish  riders  and  horses  is  proverbial. 

Cock-fighting  is  still  a  favourite  pastime  in  some 
of  the  midhind  <!0unties  of  Ulster,  and  encounters 
between  the  cock-figliters  and  the  police  now  and 
then  form  the  sul)jcctof  a  newspaper  paragrapli. 

As  for  indoor  games,  the  only  distinctively 
national  indoor  game  I  know  is  spoil-five  with  its 
variants.  This  is  a  card  game  which  is  played  in 
all  parts  of  Ireland,  and  in  which  the  value  of  the 
cards  must  seem  extraordinarily  topsy-turvy  to 
players  of  games  like  nap  and  bridge.  The  five  of 
trumps  is  the  best  card,  and  after  it,  if  I  remember 
right,  come  the  ace  of  liearts,  the  ace  of  trumps, 
Jack,  King  and  Queen  in  order,  while  among  the 
otlier  cards  the  higliest  card  in  a  red  suit  wins, 
and  tlie  lowest  card  in  a  bla.ck  suit.  Tliere  is  a 
great  deal  of  gand)liiig  over  spoil-five  and  other 
games  in  some  of  the  farm-houses,  and,  where 
money  is  rare,  it  is  not  unusual  to  play  for  the 
delf  on  the  dresser,  the  geese  in  the  field,  and 
even  bulkier  stakes.  Cards,  indeed,  are  a  passion 
in  many  Irish  homes,  and  Mr  Yeats's  lines  about 
"  old  men  playing  at  cards  with  a  twiiikling  of 
ancient  hands  "  give  us  a  picture  of  many  a  farm 


202       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

parlour  and  kitchen  on  a  winter  evening.  I  know 
a  bouse  in  which  regularly  every  winter  evening 
at  seven  o'clock  the  game  begins,  and  I  think 
this  is  no  exceptional  instance  of  enthusiasm.  Of 
course,  the  better-known  card-games  are  common 
as  well  as  spoil-five,  but  spoil-five  may  Ije  regarded 
as  essentially  the  national  game,  though  I  do  not 
know  whether  it  is  Irish  in  oriij-in  or  not. 

Chess  is  a  game  of  which  we  are  constantly 
hearing  in  the  old  heroic  legends,  and  the  chess- 
boards and  chess-men  of  the  kings  were  often 
decorated  with  gold  and  studded  with  jewels. 
There  is  a  doubt,  I  believe,  as  to  whether  the  game 
anciently  playeil  in  Ireland  resembled  more  closely 
chess  or  draughts.  At  the  ])resent  day,  ])oth  games 
are  played  a  good  deal,  but  not  to  a  remarkable 
extent. 

I  suppose  in  this  connection  it  will  not  be  in- 
appropriate to  speak  of  Irish  dancing.  Some 
people  declare  that  the  ancient  Irish  did  not  dance 
at  all — at  least,  that  no  trace  or  mention  of  danc- 
ing is  to  be  found  in  their  literature.  Dancing, 
however,  has  flourished  in  Ireland  for  several 
centuries,  and  Irish  dances  were  popular  at  the 
Court  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  The  usual  dances  are 
dillerent  sorts  of  jigs  and  reels — very  unlike  the 
jigs  and  reels  which  tail  -  coated  Paddies  and 
short-skirted  colleens  so  often  perform  for  the 
amusement  of  the  non-Irish — sometimes  even  of 
the  Irish  themselves.  The  most  remarkable  quality 
in  Irish  dancing  is  its  mixture  of  high  spirits,  and 


GAMES  AND  DANCES  203 

what,  for  want  of  a  better  word,  I  must  call  decorum. 
Irish  dancers  do  not  bring  their  arms  into  play  as 
do  the  dancers  of  Scotland,  but  keep  the  upper 
})arts  of  their  bodies  curiously  still.  Further, 
there  is  no  seizing  of  waists  in  Irish  dances,  except 
in  sonic  S([uare  dances  on  the  model  of  quadrilles, 
and  these  tlie  purists  declare  are  not  real  Irish 
dances  at  all.  It  is  always  exhilarating  to  see  the 
dances  that  take  place  in  barns  and  on  kitchen- 
floors,  where  the  men  in  their  thick-aolcd,  heavy- 
nailed  boots  perform  wonderful  feats  of  agility. 

Besides  jigs  and  reels  and  the  ordinary  country 
dance  or  lono;  dance,  there  are  also  a  number  of 
what  might  be  called  picture  dances  or  drama 
dances.  The  Rocky  Eoad  to  Dublin,  for  instance, 
gives  a  humorous  impression  of  a  limping  journey. 
The  Walls  of  Limerick  had  perhaps  a  similarly 
imitative  origin.  As  for  the  Waves  of  Tory,  witli 
its  rhythmical  ups  and  downs,  to  watch  it  is  to  have 
one's  senses  exhilarated  as  by  the  sight  of  the  hosts 
of  the  waves  advancing  towards  the  shore. 

Irish  dances,  it  may  be  said,  are  not  danced  in 
all  parts  of  Ireland,  though  they  are  now  being 
spread  with  great  enthusiasm.  It  is  impossible  to 
foretell  whether  they  will  ever  completely  drive 
foreign  dances  out  of  Ireland.  Some  of  the 
revivalists  themselves  have  no  objection  to  the  in- 
troduction of  foreign  dances  and  games,  provided 
that  the  national  dances  and  games  are  firmly 
established  again  as  part  of  the  social  life  of  the 
people. 


CHAPTER   XII 

FOOD,    CLOTHES,  ETC. 

I  HAVE  already  made  a  good  many  references  to 
the  food  and  dress  of  different  classes  of  people  in 
Ireland.  In  tiie  matter  of  food,  the  things  that  strike 
one  most  are  the  comparatively  small  amount  of 
meat  tliat  is  eaten  even  hy  jtcople  wlio  can 
allord  it,  and  Llic,  general  [)()])uhii'ity  of  the  mid-day, 
as  compared  with  the  evening,  dinner.  A  thousand 
years  ago,  we  are  told,  late  dinner  was  the  rule, 
and  in  many  town  and  country  houses  at  the 
present  time  the  late  tea  rather  than  the  mid-day 
dinner  is  the  most  distinctive  meal  of  the  day. 
Sometimes  in  the  towns  you  have  what  is  called 
"high  tea,"  with  meat  or  fish,  but  even  without 
these,  tea  is  frequently  an  abundant  and  deliglitful 
meal  owing  to  tlie  varieties  of  bread  which  are  put 
on  the  table.  Barn-ln-ack  is  an  Irish  word  mean- 
ing "speckled  cake,"  and  besides  barn-l)racks  you 
will  often  have  on  the  table  scones  and  farls  of 
wheaten,  soda  and  Indian  meal  bread,  oat-cake, 
baps,  slim-cakes,  seed-cakes,  loaves,  potato-bread, 
or  fadge,  and  various  other  sorts  of  bread.  You 
may  not  have  all  these  on  the  ta])le  at  (»nce,  but 
you  will  have  a  good  nund_)er  of  them  il'  you  are 


FOOD,  CLOTHES,  ETC.  205 

iuvited  to  share  the  hospitality  of  a  prosperous 
farm-house. 

As  for  the  tea  itself,  it  is  probably  as  good  as 
any  you  will  find  in  Europe.  The  people  as  a 
whole  have  not  yet  got  used  to  the  cheaper  sorts 
of  tea,  l)ut  are  often  williug  to  pay  fifty  per  cent,  or 
even  a  hundred  per  cent,  more  for  their  tea  than 
English  people  in  similar  circumstances  will  pay. 
Thus  3s.  and  3s.  Gd.  a  pound  are  not  uncommon 
prices  for  tea  among  comparatively  poor  people.  I 
am  afraid,  however,  it  is  only  a  matter  of  time  till 
cheap  tea  becomes  a  rule  in  Ireland.  China  tea  is 
extremely  rare,  and  the  people  like  their  tea  as 
much  for  its  strength  as  for  its  quality.  The 
excellence  of  the  tea  one  gets  in  Ireland  is  probably 
due  to  the  pleasant  spring  water  of  the  country  as 
much  as  to  any  merit  in  the  tea  itself. 

Where  the  people  in  the  country  rise  at  six  or 
earlier,  they  often  dine  at  twelve  o'clock  in  the  day, 
but  one  is  not  surprised  to  get  dinner  in  the 
country  at  any  hour  between  twelve  and  two  in 
the  afternoon.  If  dinner  is  at  twelve,  tea  will  be 
between  four  and  five,  and  there  will  be  some  milk 
and  bread-and-butter  between  nine  and  ten  before 
going  to  bed.  Porridge  is  sometimes  a  morning, 
and  sometimes  an  evening,  dish.  I  think  very  early 
hours  are  more  usual  in  Ulster  than  in  the  other 
provinces.  In  the  towns,  tea-time  is  any  time 
between  five  and  seven. 

As  regards  the  more  substantial  foods,  it  may  be 
said   that   the  small   farmers   and   the   labourers 


206       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

scarcely  ever  touch  them.  Meat  is  especially  rare. 
Bacon,  of  course,  is  eaten,  but  nothing  more  forcibly 
shows  the  abnormal  condition  into  which  the 
country  has  sunk  than  the  fact  that  the  Irish 
farmer  exports  his  own  superior  bacon  in  order  to 
make  enough  money  to  be  able  to  import  and  eat 
inferior  American  bacon.  It  is  another  curious 
example  of  national  waste.  In  the  year  1905, 
Ireland  exported  dead  meats  to  the  value  of 
X2, 482, 035,  and  imported  dead  meats  to  the  value 
of  £2,281,226 — almost  an  equal  amount — most 
of  this  being  bacon.  Thus  we  see  Ireland  carrying 
on  a  foreign  trade  in  bacon  to  the  value  of  four  or 
five  million  pounds  a  year,  and  being  a  good  deal 
poorer  instead  of  richer  as  the  result.  "  There  must," 
as  one  writer  puts  it,  "  be  an  inadequate  adjustment 
in  the  commercial  arrangements  of  a  country  where 
commodities  coming  in  are  met  and  passed  by 
exactly  similar  commodities  going  out."  Some 
people  have  grown  so  accustomed  to  thinking  that 
nothing  good  can  come  out  of  Ireland  that  they 
possibly  even  prefer  American  bacon  to  home- 
grown bacon.  I  know  that  this  preference  of  the 
foreign  to  the  national  article  is  common  in  regard 
to  such  things  as  Hour.  Several  grocers  have  told 
me  how  diilicult  it  is  to  persuade  farmers  to  take 
Irish  instead  of  imported  flour,  though  every  expert 
knows  that  good  Irish  Hour  is  as  cheap  and  as 
fine  in  quality  as  any. 

Another  point  about  meals  in  Ireland  is  that 
the  people,  except  in  some  of  the  more  prosperous 


aasij&is,  ^, 


FOOD,   CLOrilES,  ETC.  207 

or  cosmopolitan  houscliolda,  do  nob  as  a  rule  drink 
beers  and  wines  at  their  dinner  to  the  same  extent 
as  the  people  of  other  countries.  They  prefer,  as 
a  rule,  tea  or  milk  or  buttermilk — a  fine  drink 
which  is  fast  disappearing  in  these  days  of  the 
creameries.  Potatoes  and  buttermilk  make  an 
excellent  occasional  meal  in  many  farm-houses. 
There  is  also  a  curious  sort  of  milk-food  which  has 
been  popular  in  Ireland  since  Pagan  times.  This 
is  made  from  beestings,  the  milk  taken  from  cows 
wliich  have  just  calved.  Though  unfit  for 
drinking,  it  is  heated  till  it  becomes  thick  curds, 
and  these  have  a  pleasant  taste  enough.  Among 
alcoholic  drinks,  the  favourite  drink  with  the 
younger  men  is  stout  or  porter.  If  you  go  into 
a  public-house  in  Ireland  and  ask  for  "  a  pint," 
a  pint  of  stout  will  ])e  brought  to  you.  The  Irish 
public-house,  it  may  be  said  in  this  connection, 
has  usually  very  little  about  it  of  the  inn  or 
tavern.  It  has  not,  save  in  exceptional  cases, 
even  a  romantic  name,  like  "  The  Sign  of  the 
Good  Intent"  or  "The  Prodigal's  Return,"  but 
is  called  simply  after  the  proprietor.  It  is 
sociable,  however,  in  that  it  is  not  generally 
divided  into  class  compartments,  like  the  saloon, 
private  bar,  and  public  bar,  but  offers  equal  and 
undiscriminatiug  hospitality  to  all  who  enter  it, 
from  the  sweep  to  the  shoneen. 

I  do  not  know  that  much  more  need  be  said 
as  to  the  distinctive  features  of  Irish  food  and 
drink.      1    have   already   spoken    of  the   popular 


208       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

contempt  for  turDip-to})s.  It  may  be  worth 
mentiojiiug  that  dulse,  or  dilisk — a  kind  of  dried 
sea-weed — is  frequently  eaten  by  lioHday-makers, 
and  it  may  be  bouglit  in  handfuls  bom  the  baskets 
of  okl  women  at  the  fairs. 

Ice-cream  shops  with  ItaUan  names  over  the 
doors  have  become  a  popiihar  institution  in  Belfast 
of  late  years,  and  the  factory-girls  crowd  into 
these  at  the  dinner-hcnir  to  eat  unhealthy  fish, 
peas,  and  pastries,  and  to  drink  unhealthy  minerals. 
One  or  two  of  the  factories,  I  believe,  like  the 
York  Street  and  the  Jeunymount  mills,  have  now 
restaurants  connected  with  them  at  which  the 
workers  can  have  good  cheap  food,  but  these  "re 
the  exce[)tions. 

To  come  to  the  matter  of  dress,  it  might  truly 
enough  be  said  that  the  only  distinctively  national 
garment  which  is  to  be  found  all  over  Ireland 
to-day  is  the  shawl  worn  by  the  women.  In  some 
parts  of  the  country,  tlie  wives  of  the  farmers  as 
well  as  of  the  laliourers  wear  the  shawl  ;  thougli 
many  of  them,  of  course,  wear  hats  and  bonnets 
in  addition  on  Sundays.  Black  or  grey  is  perhaps 
the  prevailing  colour,  but  in  different  parts  of  the 
country  dilferent  colours  are  the  vogue,  and  even 
the  fashion  in  which  the  shawl  is  arranged  varies 
from  place  to  place.  In  one  district  you  will  find 
fawn-coloured  or  brown  shawls  almost  the  only 
wear,  and  these  have  often  broad  borders  with 
designs  in  other  colours  woven  into  them.  Else- 
where   the  women  frequently  wear  two  shawls — 


FOOD,  CLOTHES,  ETC.  209 

oue  over  the  shoulders  and  the  other  over  the 
head.  In  the  iiiauufacturing  towns,  they  draw 
the  shawd  tight  and  nunnisldy  across  the  brows 
and  pin  it  beneath  tlie  cliin,  and  on  a  wet  evening 
the  lanipdit  streets  are  filled  with  hurrying 
]\ladonua-likc  women  of  a  strange,  hidden  beauty. 
Again  you  may  find  the  shawl  worn  like  a  wild 
hood  that  has  half- fallen  from  the  head,  while  one 
end  is  flung  loosely  round  the  shoulder.  Check 
handkerchiefs  are  often  worn  over  the  head,  and 
in  some  parts  the  old  women  wear  dainty  frilled 
caps. 

Tlui  natiouid  dross  of  the  men  is  said  to  l)e  tlie 
kilt,  but  tliis  is  only  worn  as  yet  by  a  number  of 
enthusiastic  pioneers.  The  Irish  kilt  is  not  made 
of  tartan,  but  is  s.'dTron -coloured,  though  t.'ii'tan, 
J  bebeve,  is  {i,  thin*;  of  Irisli  oriijin.  The  onbuarv 
costume  for  men  is  suiliciently  unremarkable  in 
cut ;  elderly  men  seem  to  have  a  preference  for  a 
kind  of  morning  coat.  The  material  of  which  the 
clothes  are  made,  on  the  other  hand,  is  of  distinctive 
interest,  and  a  bog-coloured  coat  of  dyed  home- 
spun has  an  appropriate  beauty  of  its  own.  In 
Connemara  the  men  wear  a  bainin — a  jacket  of 
white  flannel — which  helps  to  give  an  air  of  local 
wonderfulness  to  the  roads  and  the  fields.  The 
women,  too,  with  their  petticoats  of  beautiful 
shades  of  red  remind  us  of  a  time  when  the  Irish 
were  noted  for  their  love  of  colours,  thouirh  the 
red  petticoat  of  the  town  is  sometimes  eye-scaring 
enough. 

0 


210       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

The  red  petticoat  of  rural  Ireland,  I  may  say, 
is  of  a  totally  different  colour  from  that  worn 
in  pseudo-Irisli  plays  on  the  British  stage.  It 
is  not  an  offensive  scarlet ;  its  colour  is  nearer 
that  of  a  red  carnation.  It  is  not,  of  course,  the 
custom  to  wear  green  garments  along  with  it. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  beauty  of  the 
heavy  dyed  garments  of  the  women  of  A  chill, 
some  of  bright  blue,  some  of  bright  red,  some 
of  bright  green.  It  is  customary  to  use  an 
incredible  number  of  yards  of  stuff  in  these  skirts, 
so  that  the  figure  has  something  of  a  clumsy  look. 
1  heard  from  one  girl  how  an  Achill  woman  had 
reproved  her  for  immodesty,  because  she  wore  a 
skirt  of  the  ordinary  shape  and  measure. 

The  pampooties,  or  cow-skin  sandals,  worn  by 
the  people  of  the  Aran  Islands,  are  the  most 
distinctive  foot-dress  to  be  found  in  Ireland. 
In  some  parts  of  the  country  you  will  also 
occasionally  see  an  old  woman  going  the  roads  in 
martins — a  kiud  of  soleless  socks  which  would  do 
little,  one  imagines,  to  keep  the  feet  either  warm 
or  dry  on  uncomfortable  days.  Nearly  all  the 
grown-up  people  wear  boots,  however,  and  it  is 
only  the  children  as  a  rule  who  run  about  with 
tlieii'  feet  as  bare  as  their  heads. 

There  is  scarcely  any  need  to  refer  to  the  dress 
of  the  professional  classes  in  the  towns.  It  is  of 
the  cosmopolitan  sort,  and  the  only  noticeable 
thing  in  regard  to  it  is  the  comparative  infre(juency 
of  the  tall  hat. 


CTTAPTER   Xin 


RELIGION 


If  you  are  in  a  little  town  in  any  part  of  Ireland — 
except  the  iiorth-enst  —  .'il)out  noon,  when  the 
clia[H'l-l)elI  riii^s  ("or  the  juiii^elu.s,  you  will  Hce  all 
the  men  8ii(ldenly  taking  their  liat^  oil"  and  cross- 
ing themselves  as  they  say  their  mid-dny  prayers. 
The  world  loses  its  air  of  work,  or  of  common- 
place idleness,  and  the  streets  take  on  an  intense 
beauty  for  the  moment  as  the  old  people  and  the 
young  half-hide  their  eyes  and  murmur  a  rapid 
prayer  to  the  Mother  of  God.  The  boy  walking 
by  a  loaded  cart  stands  still  with  bared  head  or 
stumbles  forward,  praying  as  he  walks.  In  the 
doors  of  the  houses,  in  the  entries,  on  the  bridge 
over  the  river,  tlie  town  assumes  a  multitudinous 
reverence  as  tlie  tide  of  prayer  sweeps  through  it 
to  the  dinning  music  of  the  bell.  Even  the 
policeman,  ludicrously  stiff  in  his  military  uniform, 
lowers  his  head  with  a  kind  of  salute  and  offers 
homage  to  heaven.  I  confess  I  like  this  daily 
forg(>tfulnesfl  of  the  wcu'ld  in  the  middle  of  the 
worhl.  It  brings  wonder  into  almost  every 
country  town  in  Ireland  at  least  once  every  day. 
.1     On  Sunday,  I  imagine,  Ireland  must  be  one  of 


212       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

the  most  religious-looking  countries  in  Europe. 
North,  Sol  th,  East  and  West,  nearly  every  one 
who  is  physically  lit  goes  to  church  or  to  chapel. 
Of  course,  there  are  a  few  agnostics  even  in 
Ireland,  and  all  the  towns  of  any  size  have  their 
growing  population  of  indifferents — people  who 
stay  away  from  church,  not  because  they  believe 
something  else  than  orthodox  Cliristauity,  Init 
because  they  believe  nothing  at  all.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  must  be  a  greater  proportioTi  of  men 
as  compared  with  women  atten<ling  tlie  churches 
in  Ireland  tlian  in  most  Christain  countries. 
Sunday  wears  a  different  appearance  in  different 
parts  of  the  (country,  but  not  much  so  during  the 
time  of  the  morning  religious  services.  Until 
after  one  o'clock  in  the  day  the  streets  and  the 
roads  are  mainly  filled  with  men,  women  and 
children  who  have  been  to  church,  or  wlio  are 
going  there. 

The  Ulster  Sabbath  is  more  like  the  Scottish 
Sabbath  than  anytliing  else.  1'lie  trams  are 
runninc;  in  Belfast,  but  there  are  still  a  o'ood 
many  people  in  the  city  who  would  no  more  think 
of  riding  a  tram  on  a  Sunday  than  of  picking  your 
pocket.  As  for  travelling  in  a  railway  train  on  a 
Sunday,  this  is  looked  on  by  the  strict  as  tli(i 
loos(;st  behaviour.  So  rigid  is  the  idea  of  Sabbath- 
keeping  even  in  Belfast,  that  when  a  i\t\v  years 
ago  a  gentleman  bequeathed  some  money  to  the 
city  for  the  provision  of  music  in  the  parks, 
making  his  bequest  conditional   upon   the  music 


RELIGION  213 

being  given  on  Sundays  as  well  as  on  week-days, 
the  bequest  bad  to  be  refused.  Had  it  been 
accepted,  there  would  likely  have  been  an  out- 
break of  Sabbath  riots  against  Sabbath-breaking. 

The  feeling  against  playing  games  or  holding 
political  meetings  on  Sunday  is  still  strong,  though 
it  is  fast  weakening.  Some  years  ago,  a  number  o 
boys  went  out  to  play  hurling  in  the  bottom  of 
an  old  circular  fort  which  was  only  a  few  hundred 
yards  away  from  a  ))ublic-housc  greatly  frefpiented 
]»y  bona  (ide  travellers  from  Belfast  (^n  Sundays. 
One  day,  the  bona  fides,  shocked  that  so  gross  an 
outrage  on  the  peace  of  the  Sabbath  should  be 
going  on  almost  within  smelling-distance  of  their 
pints  of  stout,  sallied  forth  and,  along  with  a 
crowd  of  villagers  and  country-people,  made  an 
onslaught  on  the  boys.  The  boys  defended 
themselves  through  a  vigorous  fight  with  their 
hurling-sticks,  but  they  were  mercilessly  beaten, 
and  one  of  them  at  least  retains  the  marks  of  the 
battle  till  this  day. 

The  British  Trade  Unionists,  I  remember,  were 
shocked  some  years  ago  when  it  was  proposed,  at 
a  congress  they  held  in  Belfast,  to  hold  a  demon- 
stration on  a  Sunday,  and  the  motion  was  defeated 
by  Belfast  votes.  Mr  John  Burns  was  so  enraged 
when  the  result  of  the  voting  was  announced  that 
he  cried  out :  "  Belfast  bigotry  !  "  On  the  follow- 
ing Saturday  1  was  present  at  a  great  labour 
gathering  in  Ormeau  Park,  at  which  Mr  Burns 
was  one   of  the  speakers.       Some  sour  working- 


214       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

man  in  the  crowd  kept  mumbling  tilings  while 
Mr  Burns  was  speaking  from  a  wagonette,  and 
at  last  hurled  at  his  head  the  phrase :  "  You 
and  your  Sabbath  demonstrations  !  "  "  It's  all 
right,  my  friend,"  said  Mr  Burns  in  a  jaunty  way 
he  then  had,  "  this  is  not  the  Sabbath."  "It 
would  Ije  all  the  same  to  you  if  it  was,"  retorted 
the  other  with  a  growl,  and  J  thought  he  had  the 
best  of  the  argument. 

Sunday  in  some  of  the  country  parts  of  Ulster 
is  a  still  stricter  affair  than  has  yet  been  suoo-ested. 
Some  of  the  older  people — people,  too,  of  high 
cultui'e  and  intelligence — -would  not  open  until 
Monday  a  letter  that  came  to  tiiem  by  Sunday 
morning's  post :  for,  ridiculously  enough,  there  is 
a  Saljbath  post  in  some  of  the  most  Sabbatarian 
parts  of  Ireland.  It  is  regarded  by  the  extremely 
orthodox  as  a  piece  of  doubtful  morality  even  to 
go  for  a  walk  on  Sunday.  Whistling  on  Sunday 
is  suppressed  as  a  sin,  even  if  one  whistles  a 
psalm-tune,  and  the  same  nniy  l)e  said  of  the  [»laying 
of  musical  instruments,  though  many  people,  who 
believe  it  is  wicked  to  play  an  organ  in  church,  do 
not  object  to  a  harmonium  in  the  Sunday  School. 
Boating  is  not  permitted :  going  into  a  fruit- 
garden  to  eat  goosberries  is  immoral.  There  are 
even  some  subjects  of  conversation  which  you  will 
do  ill  to  broach  on  a  Sunday  in  strict  company. 
I  have  often  thought  it  odd,  however,  that  not 
even  in  the  most  scrupulous  houses  do  you  meet 
with  the  old  Scottish  sort  of  Sa])batarianism  which 


RELIGION  215 

]n'oliibits  the  cooking  of  moat  ou  Sundays,  and  sets 
whole  families  down  to  cold  dinners.  In  Ulster 
Sunday  is  the  fullest-feeding  day  of  the  week. 

Sabbatarianism,  as  I  have  said,  is  dying  fast  in 
Ulstei',  and  you  will  lind  clergymen  discussing  all 
manner  of  subjects  nowadays,  and  even  reading 
novels,  on  Sundays.  Protestants  usually  think 
that  the  Irish  Catholic  has  no  regard  for  Sunday, 
especially  after  mid-day,  but  had  any  of  them  been 
])resent  one  day  when  I  attended  a  service  in  the 
Catholii;  Cntliedi'id  in  Sligo  they  would  have  been 
surprised  to  hear  a  young  priest  denouncing 
Sabbath- breaking  with  a  vigour  worthy  of  an 
orthodox  Presbyterian.  I  met  a  Catholic  school- 
master in  the  same  county  who  expressed  his  horror 
at  the  universality  with  which  hurling  and  foot- 
ball were  l)eing  played  on  Sundays.  I  reminded 
him  that  priests  frequently  attend  these  nuitches, 
"  I  don't  care,"  he  said  ;  "  I  think  it's  wrong." 

Catholic  Irehind,  as  a  whole,  would  not  agree 
to  so  strict  a  rule.  The  majority  of  Catholics 
are  quite  satisfied  with  their  Sunday  observance 
when  once  iMass  is  over,  and,  in  one  country  phacc 
I  know,  the  people  coming  from  the  twelve  o'clock 
Mass  turn  into  the  principal  Bho})  of  the  district 
to  make  their  week's  purchases.  This  shop  is 
at  once  a  hotel,  a  public-house,  a  post-office,  and 
a  general  store,  and  the  people,  I  think,  are 
supposed  to  be  going  to  it  for  their  letters.  The 
road  in  front  of  the  shop  is  filled  like  a  market- 
square,    the   young   men   sitting  on   a    wall,   the 


216       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

men  witli  l)ear(ls  standing  round  and  getting  rid 
of  the  week's  gossip,  and  tlie  old  women  in  their 
beautiful  frilled  eaps  and  elieek  shawls  paeing 
up  to  the  shop  door  and  talking  to  all  and  sundry 
in  their  rapid  Irish.  It  all  seems  like  an  agreeably 
miniature  market  without  the  noise  of  animals. 

In  some  of  the  lonely  country  parts,  where  the 
people  have  to  come  long  distances  to  chapel,  you 
will  see  a  still  more  curious  Sa!)l)ath  sight  than 
this  business  of  commerce  and  gossip.  These 
isolated  chapels  have  sometimes  a  low  white 
stable  connected  with  them,  just  as  some  old- 
fashioned  Presbyterian  churches  have,  and,  when 
Mass  is  over,  you  will  see  the  people  slowly 
getting  ready  their  c;irs  and  their  ]i(n\ses  to  go 
home.  It  is  odd  enouirh  to  see  men  ridino-  from 
church  on  horseback  in  their  rustic  respectability, 
but  the  spectacle  becomes  comic  when  you  see 
their  wives  sitting  behind  them,  pillion  fashion, 
wearing  the  foolish  bonnets  and  l)lack  jackets  for 
which  countrywomen  discard  their  week-day  clothes 
on  great  occasions  like  Sunday.  I  met  a  whole 
cavalcade  of  women  riding  from  chapel  like  this 
behind  their  husbands  one  Sunday  morning  when 
I  was  driving  in  the  south  of  County  Mayo. 
The  sight  surprises  a  nuin  from  town  like  a  piece 
of  romance  :  there  is  something;  fascinatino-  and 
gipsy ish  about  it. 

Irish  religion,  however,  is  not  a  mere  affair  of 
Sunday.  It  is  an  essential  part  of  the  life  of  the 
house  every  day  of  the  week.     The  Catholic  has 


RELIGION  217 

his  crucifix  in  some  couvenient  place  to  remind 
him  of  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  at  his  prayers,  and 
the  Protestant  has  tlic  Bible  to  turn  to  for  help  in 
times  of  ease  and  difficulty.  On  some  evenings,  if 
you  are  in  a  Catliolic  liouse  in  the  most  Irisli  parts 
of  the  country,  you  may  hear  a  strange  crying — 
ahnost  a  lamentation — such  as  you  might  expect 
in  days  of  religious  revival.  This  is  at  the  hour  of 
family  j^rayer.  The  family  worship  of  Protestants 
in  country  places  is  usually  less  demonstrative  but 
no  less  impressive,  in  some  Presbyterian  houses 
a  psalm  is  first  sung,  and  the  members  of  the 
family  then  read  a  chapter  of  the  Bible,  verse 
about.  The  servant  joins  in  the  reading,  and,  as 
her  education  is  usually  of  the  most  elementary 
nature,  her  treatment  of  some  of  the  old  Hebrew 
names,  and  even  of  the  simpler  English  words,  is 
at  times  curiously  original.  Occasionally,  an  old 
evangelist  or  lay-reader  goes  round  the  poorer 
houses  and  holds  a  small  family  service  in  them, 
and  these  lay-readers  have  often  a  way  of  being 
more  violent  than  sweetly  reasonable  in  their 
propagation  of  Christian  truths. 

"  0  Lord,"  one  of  them  prayed  in  a  house  I 
know,  "do  thou  shake  these  people  over  hell-fire, 
but  shake  them  in  marcy  !  " 

Sometimes  you  feel  that  there  is  almost  an 
excess  of  the  terrors  of  hell  in  the  religion  of  the 
Protestants,  and  I  believe  some  priests  insist  with 
equal  vigour  upon  the  penal  side  of  religion. 

One   of    the    most   remarkable    events    in    the 


218       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

liistory  of  Ireland  during  the  nineteenth  century 
was  the  Ulster  Revival  in  1859,  when  half  the 
province  was  swept  by  a  storm  of  religious  fear 
and  fervour.  The  very  children  in  the  schools  in 
some  places  would  suddenly  cry  out  in  lamentation 
for  their  sins  and  fall  prostrate.  The  factory  girls 
would  be  caught  with  the  new  passion  of  repent- 
ance at  their  work,  and  within  a  short  time  dozens 
of  them  would  be  lying  ** stricken"  on  the  ground. 
One  spinning  factory  had  to  close  for  two  days, 
owing  to  the  workers  having  been  incapacitated 
for  work  by  the  revival,  and  when  it  was  opened 
again,  only  about  half  the  hands  were  able  to 
resume  their  duties.  The  printers  in  a  Coleraine 
newspaper  office  were  seized  with  the  new  exalta- 
tion on  a  Thursday,  and  the  appearance  of  the 
paper  was  delayed  for  a  whole  day  in  consequence. 
In  the  churches  it  was  a  common  tiling  for  people 
suddenly  to  spring  to  their  feet  with  loud  cries 
and  then  fall  prostrate  to  the  ground,  I  have 
heard  from  a  lady,  who  was  present  at  services 
on  occasions  like  these,  how  the  women  used  to 
be  carried  out  from  the  churches  into  the  open  air, 
with  all  and  sundry  dragging  at  the  hoops  of  their 
crinolines.  Men  and  women  who  were  stricken 
often  lost  all  their  bodily  i)owers  for  the  time 
being,  and,  falling  into  a  trance,  would  remain 
deaf,  dumb,  blind  and  motionless  for  hours. 
These  trances  were  looked  on  as  something  miracu- 
lous, because  the  people  who  fell  into  them 
would  frequently  give  warning  beforehand  to  the 


RELIGION  219 

bystanders  regarding  the  hour  at  which  the 
trance  would  begin  and  the  liour  at  which  tliey 
would  wake  out  of  it  again.  Probably  there  is 
an  explanation  in  hypnotism  of  the  prophetic  gifts 
of  these  "  sleepers." 

Another  phe?)oinenon,  the  genuineness  of  which 
is  doubted  by  many  of  the  Presbyterians  them- 
selves, was  common  during  the  Ulster  Revival. 
This  was  the  appearance  of  marks,  cojnparable  to 
the  stigmata  of  St  Francis,  on  the  bodies  of  certain 
religious  enthusiasts.  Sometimes  these  represented 
printed  characters,  sometimes  mystic  symbols,  and 
those  wdio  could  show  them  made  a  wide  reputation 
as  proj^hets  and  people  divinely  honoured.  We 
hear  of  instances  where  admission  was  charged  to 
visitors  to  the  houses  of  such  peculiar  people,  but 
it  is  fair  to  suppose  that  those  who  put  religious 
sensations  upon  the  market  in  this  way  were 
charlatans  taking  advantage  of  the  spirit  of  the 
times.  I  cannot  agree,  however,  with  clergy- 
men who  put  down  all  these  apparent  miracles  as 
impostures.  Presbyterian  leaders  are  sometimes 
too  nmch  afraid  of  occurrences  that  look  like 
miracles,  if  these  are  of  a  date  later  than  apostolic 
times. 

The  ordinary  Protestant  laity,  I  think,  is  free 
from  this  scepticism,  and  a  record  of  the 
experiences  of  commonplace  people  during  the 
Revival  times,  if  written  from  the  people's  instead 
of  from  the  clergyman's  point  of  view,  would 
make    amazing     reading.       A    clergyman    wrote 


220       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

a  book,  "  The  Year  of  Grace,"  on  the  period,  but 
it  is  a  mere  tract  when  it  might  have  been  a 
book  of  the  wonders  of  the  human  imagination  and 
spirit. 

"  I  believe,  as  a  matter  of  fact,"  a  friend  once 
wrote  to  me,  "  the  poorer  Protestants  all  over  the 
country  share  the  superstitions  of  their  Catholic 
neighbours — if  superstitions  is  the  right  word." 
Certainly  there  are  parts  of  the  country  in  which 
they  resort  to  the  Holy  Wells  with  the  same 
hopefulness  of  cures. 

Speaking  of  miraculous  things  reminds  me  that  I 
once  met  a  man  who  Ijclieved  lie  had  performed  a 
miracle — and  lie  was  a  Presbyterian.  He  was  an 
old  and  almost  chikl-like  man,  who  followed  the  pro- 
fession of  colporteur  ;  in  other  words,  he  went  into 
the  Catholic  districts  and  tried  to  persuade  the 
people  to  read  the  Bible,  in  the  hope  that  they 
would  afterwards  become  Protestants.  He  declared 
that  he  had  one  day  been  called  into  a  house 
where  there  was  a  dead  girl,  and  that  God  had  put 
it  in  his  power,  something  after  the  pattern  of 
Elijah  in  the  widow's  house,  to  raise  the  dead  to 
life.  It  was  impossible  to  doubt  the  old  man's 
sincerity,  and,  if  he  was  as  accurate  as  he  was 
sincere,  the  people  of  the  district  were  not  slow  to 
believe  that  he  possessed  some  miraculous  powers. 
Even  the  priest  came  up  to  him  some  time 
afterwards,  he  said,  and  asked  him  to  touch  him 
on  the  breast  and  cure  an  apparently  incurable 
pain  of  the  heart. 


RELIGION  221 

This  brings  me  to  yet  another  feature  in  the 
religious  life  of  Ireland — the  proselytising  tendency 
of  the  Protestants.  The  militant  Protestants  have 
never  been  weary  of  attempting  to  convert  the 
Catholics  to  their  own  point  of  view.  They  even 
took  advantage  of  the  terrible  Famine  of  tlie 
forties  —  the  "  starvation  "  as  Mitchel  called  it, 
for  the  people  died  in  the  midst  of  plentiful 
harvests — to  give  spoonfuls  of  Protestantism 
alternately  with  spoonfuls  of  soup  to  famishing 
people  too  far  gone  in  weakness  to  refuse  both. 
Wise  in  their  generation,  they  had  missionaries 
trained  to  speak  the  Irish  language  so  as  to  get  the 
more  intimately  to  the  inner  spirit  of  the  people, 
and  the  decay  of  the  Irish  language  became  much 
more  rapid  wlicn  it  began  to  l)e  regarded  in  many 
places  as  tlie  language  of  the  Protestant  prosely- 
tiser.  I  wonder  if  it  was  with  an  eye  to  its  value 
as  a  medium  of  proselytisin  that,  at  the  Presby- 
terian General  Synod  of  Ulster  in  1828,  it  was,  as 
we  find  in  the  published  Minutes,  "  overtured  and 
agreed  to,  that  it  be  most  earnestly  recommended 
by  the  Synod  to  candidates  for  the  Ministry  to 
apply  themselves  to  the  study  of  tlie  Irish 
language."  Whatever  may  have  been  the  reason 
for  this  overture,  it  is  a  lasting  pity  that  the 
recommendation  has  never  been  carried  out. 

As  I  have  said,  however,  the  Protestants  no  sooner 
began  to  use  Irish  in  their  propaganda  than  the 
Catholic  priests,  or  some  of  them,  set  to  disparaging 
and  discouraging  it.     Some  years  ago,  there  were 


222       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

parts  of  Ireland  where  a  stranger,  attempting  to 
speak  to  the  people  in  their  own  language,  was 
looked  on  with  the  utmost  suspicion  in  consequence. 
Miclieal  Breathnach,  one  of  the  young  princes 
of  the  Irish  revival,  yet  dead  already,  found  this 
out  one  day  when  he  tried  to  live  up  to  Gaelic 
League  principles  in  a  western  town  which  he  was 
visiting.  He  spoke  to  a  man  in  the  street  in  Irish, 
and  before  long  an  inquisitive  crowd  had  gathered 
round  him.  They  asked  him  where  he  came  from 
and  where  he  had  learned  his  Irish,  but  they  would 
believe  nothing  he  said,  and  swore  that  he  was  a 
Protestant  from  Dublin  who  wanted  to  make 
"soupers"  of  them — a  reminiscence  of  the  soul- 
purchasing  soup  of  Famine  times.  Ultimately  one 
of  them  asked  him  if  he  knew  what  weasels'  eggs 
were.  He  said  tliat  he  did  not.  A  heap  of  stones 
lying  by  the  roadside  was  pointed  out  to  him,  and 
he  was  told  that  those  were  weasels'  eggs,  and  that, 
if  he  didn't  clear  out,  he  would  be  made  a  present 
of  a  few  of  them.  This  incident  occurred  a  few 
years  ago,  I  may  say,  in  one  of  the  most  Anglicised 
towns  in  the  west ;  but  even  there  the  revolution 
in  Irish  ideals  has  produced  great  changes  by  to- 
day. 

On  the  whole,  it  must  be  admitted,  the  Irish 
Catholic  accepts  the  Protestant  missionary  with 
great  tolerance.  There  has  been  trouble  in  the 
streets  of  Cork,  and,  I  believe,  in  the  streets  of 
Galway,  owing  to  the  presence  of  missionaries 
preaching  militant  Protestantism  in  the  public  places 


IIELIGION  223 

in  each  city.  But  the  Catholics  as  a  whole  take 
these  attacks  on  their  faith  calmly — much  more 
calmly  than  would  Irish  Protestants  take  similar 
attacks  on  Protestantism.  The  Catholic,  indeed, 
may  pray  in  his  churches  for  the  conversion  of  his 
non-Catliolic  fellow-Christians,  but  1  do  not  be- 
lieve there  is  anybody  freer  from  the  proselytising 
spirit  than  the  ordinary  Irish  Catholic — even 
the  ordinary  Irish  Catholic  priest.  A  score  of 
exceptions  do  not  disprove  my  contention.  Irish 
Cjitholics  nearly  always  give  a  fme  example  in 
respecting  the  religion  of  their  neighbours.  A 
Protestant  rowdy  does  not  object  to  Hinging  a  stone 
at  a  chapel  window,  but  a  Catholic  rowdy  will 
think  twice,  or  oftener,  before  he  will  do  any 
damage  to  a  Protestant  Churcli. 

Wliere  Irish  Protestantism  expresses  itself  in 
somcwliid,  militant  missions,  one  might  say,  Irisli 
Catholicism  expresses  itself  in  peaceful  processions. 
You  see  these  winding  along  the  country  roads, 
making  solemn  music  and  Hying  banners,  and  the 
streets  of  some  of  the  towns  are  busy  with  them 
during  certain  days  of  the  year.  These  are  church 
or  school  processions,  however.  A  procession  of  a 
different  sort  is  that  which  every  year,  on  a  day 
in  July  or  August,  climbs,  in  the  ancient  pilgrim 
spirit,  the  rocky  cone  of  Croagh  Patrick  overlooking 
Clew  Bay.  It  used  to  be  the  custom  for  the  more 
devout  pilgrims  to  clindj  this  stony  way  on  their 
knees,  l>Mt  the  [)riests  in  the  end  forbade  so  cruel 
a     display     of    self-torture.      Women,     especially 


224       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

married  women  who  desire  children  or  a  blessing 
on  ehildren  that  will  soon  he  horn  to  them,  form  a 
conspicuous  part  of  the  long  procession,  and  some 
of  the  most  ardent  take  oif  their  hoots  at  the  most 
difficult  part  of  the  journey  and  walk  on  the 
stones  barefoot.  A  year  or  two  ago,  a  lady  I 
know  was  walking  in  the  ])roceRsion  and  stumltled 
accidentally  agaijist  one  of  the  women-pilgrims. 
The  woman's  husband  thrust  his  shoulder  against 
my  friend  and  pushed  her  off.  "  Don't  interfere 
with  the  lady,  Michael,"  said  the  woman  gently  : 
"  sure,  she  didn't  hurt  me."  "  1  wouldn't  let  her 
push  you,  Bridgie,"  declared  the  man  with  decision, 
"not  if  she  was  nine  months  gon(;." 

This  incident  suggests  better  than  a  dozen  pages 
of  description  the  faith,  the  energy,  the  primitive 
drama,  of  this  mountain  procession. 

Catholic  processions  in  the  north  have  a  way  of 
being  more  political.  The  Ancient  Order  of 
ITibernians,  which  has  jin  especially  strong  hold 
on  northern  (Jatholics,  is  little  more  than  a 
Catholic  counterpart  of  the  Orange  Order,  it  has 
bands  and  banners  and  passwords  on  much  the 
same  model,  and,  though  it  is  strongly  Catholic,  the 
priests  sometimes  appear  to  l)e  in  doul)t  as  to 
whether  they  ought  not  to  denounce  it  as  a  secret 
society.  Its  Lady-day  processions  in  August, 
however,  have  usually  a  Nationalist  rather  than  a 
merely  sectarian  colour,  but  at  the  same  time  it  is 
a  question  whether  they  do  not  make  for  the 
introduction  of  sectarianism  into  national  politics. 


RELIGION  225 

Orangeism  and  Hibemianism,  indeed,  are  mere 
relics  of  mediaeval  wars.  No  clear-tbinkinof  Irish- 
man  now  looks  on  the  Irish  question  as  being  a 
question  between  Protestant  and  Catholic.  If 
there  were  no  Catholics  in  Ireland,  the  Irish 
question  might  be  of  a  different  colour,  but  it 
would  be  none  the  less  acute. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKERS 

I  HOPE  that  before  long  some  oue  with  knowledge 
and  courage  will  write  a  book  about  tlie  lives  of 
the    workers    in    Ireland.     I    am    not    thinkinor 

O 

especially  about  the  skilled  workers  in  the  towns, 
organised  in  Trade  Unions  and  able  to  secure  for 
themselves  as  good  a  wage  as  the  skilled  workers 
in  England  and  Scotland.  It  is  the  unskilled 
labourers,  the  women  and  the  half-time  children, 
who  are  most  in  need  of  some  one  to  interpret 
their  lives.  The  question  of  sweated  labour  and 
of  child-labour  is  a  crucial  one  in  Ireland  to-day. 
Miss  Martindale,  that  generous-minded  and  fearless 
lady-iuspector,  has  stated  some  of  the  realities  of 
our  industrial  conditions  in  the  little-read  pages  of 
Factories  and  Workshops  blue-books.  It  may 
seem  surprising  to  some  people  that  we  did  not 
collect  and  publish  the  facts  ourselves.  But  the 
truth  is,  we  were  educated  in  our  schools  and 
colleges  to  take  an  interest  in  all  things  except 
Irish  things,  and,  when  some  of  the  facts  of  Irish 
life  are  put  before  us,  they  astonish  no  one  so 
much  as  they  astonish  ourselves. 

If  you  go  to  Belfast,  the  chief  industrial  centre 


THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKERS  227 

in  Ireland,  you  will  find  the  skilled  artisans  in 
the  shipyards  and  the  foundries  living  in  fairly 
comfortable  little  brick  houses,  and  earning,  as  I 
have  said,  very  decent  wages.  The  unskilled 
labourers  are  in  a  diflcrent  ])osition.  Among  the 
best  paid  arc  those  who  work  for  the  Cor[)oration 
at  a  wage  of  about  21s.  weekly — a  wage  which,  I 
remember,  provoked  a  good  deal  of  protest  among 
otherwise  humane  people  by  its  generosity  when  it 
was  first  agreed  u])on.  In  the  shi{)yards  unskilled 
labour  is  not  so  well  re\vard(Ml.  Here  the  worker's 
wage  may  be  estimated,  1  believe,  at  from  17s.  Gd. 
to  18s.  Gd.  weekly.  In  the  building  trades  it 
varies  from  15s.  to  17s.,  and  labourers  in  mills  and 
for  small  firms  get  from  12s.  to  15s.  Carters  of 
six  months'  experience  and  over,  however,  make 
about  22s.  per  week  ;  carters  ibr  teams  get  2Gs.  a 
week  for  a  ton-hour  day  ;  wliilc  youths  who  drive 
light  vans  earn  16s.  or  a  little  more.  Dockers  are 
paid  from  4^d.  to  6d.  an  hour. 

If  we  turn  to  the  textile  trades — the  most  im- 
portant trades  in  Ulster,  for  they  are  established, 
not  only  in  Belfast,  but  in  Lurgan,  Portadown, 
Ballymena,  Lisburn,  Uerry,  and  a  score  of  other 
towns  through  the  province — we  shall  not  find  an 
improved  state  of  affairs.  It  is  the  custom  to 
congratulate  Belfast  on  having  the  ship-building 
industry  to  give  employment  to  the  men  and  the 
linen  industry  to  give  employment  to  the  women, 
and  there  is  some  reason  for  this  congratulation. 
At  the  same  time,  these  industries  have  fitted  into 


228       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

each  other  to  the  interest  of  the  employers  rather 
than  of  the  employed,  and  the  linen  manufacturers 
seem  to  regulate  the  pay  of  their  women-workers 
on  the  assumption  that  the  latter  are  living  in  the 
houses  of  either  their  husbands  or  their  fathers. 
I  know  that  Ireland  is  not  the  only  country  in 
which  the  economic  independence  of  woman  is  a 
burning  question — or  ought  to  be.  ]\\\t  the  con- 
ditions which  prevail  in  other  countries  do  not 
make  the  conditions  which  prevail  in  Ireland  in 
the  matter  of  women's  labour  any  the  less  objec- 
tionable. 

Here,  approximately,  are  a  few  instances  of  the 
wages  paid  to  women  in  the  spinning  and  weaving 
mills  of  Belfast,  l^-eparcrs,  spreaders,  drawers 
and  rovers  get  from  8s.  Gd.  to  lis.  per  week  ; 
spinners  earn  from  lis.  6d.  to  13s.  ;  reelers  from 
15s.  to  I7s.  ;  weavers  and  winders  from  8s.  to  14s.  ; 
though  those  who  are  engaged  in  line  weaving  ur 
damask  work  earn  up  to  18s.  or  19s.  As  for  male 
workers  in  these  industries,  skilled  labourers  like 
flax-dressers  are  paid  from  24s.  to  28s.  per  week, 
and  roughers  from  20s.  to  24s.  These  figures, 
however,  give  a  rather  flattering  idea  of  the  wages 
paid  in  the  textile  industries,  for  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  it  is  always  possible  that  either 
the  cut-throat  competition  which  continually  goes 
on  between  the  spinning  and  the  weaving  industries, 
or  some  other  cause  of  trade  depression,  may  result 
in  the  mills  working  only  short  time.  Towards 
the  end   of  1907,   for  instance,   all   the  spinning 


THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKERS   22.9 

mills  were  working  for  half-time  for  nearly  twelve 
months,  and  a  friend  of  mine  tells  me  of  a  reeler 
lie  knew,  a  married  woman,  who  was  trying  during 
all  that  time  to  support  a  family  on  Gs.  3d.  a  week. 
Skilled  male  labourers,  like  ilax-roughcrs,  were  for 
a  time  making  as  low  a  wage  as  10s.  6d.  weekly. 
The  workers,  indeed,  suffer  when  trade  is  bad, 
but  they  do  not  gain  in  proportion  when  trade  is 
good. 

In  the  early  part  of  1907,  thougli  it  was  known 
that  several  firms  had  made  an  extra  profit  of 
£80,000,  the  spinners  had  to  strike  for  a  rise  in 
wages  of  Gd.  a  week.  The  low  wages  paid  in 
Belfast  to  women — lowered  still  further  by  spells 
of  short  work-lime  and  by  a  ruthless  system  of 
fines — undoubtedly  mean  that  many  young  women 
are  driven  on  to  tlie  stretits  to  eke  out  a  living  by 
})rostitution.  And  yet  it  is  only  recently,  I  tliink, 
that  any  clergyman  in  Belfast  ever  thought  it 
worth  his  while  to  preach  a  sermon  on  the  con- 
ditions of  labour. 

So  far  I  have  given  approximate  figures — and  I 
do  not  think  they  will  be  seriously  challenged. 
Warehouse  girls'  wages,  however,  are  no  better 
than  those  of  factory-workers.  In  a  fairly  decent 
house,  a  woman  stitcher  earns  from  10s.  and  lis. 
to  18s.  a  week  on  the  piece-work  system,  and 
printers — girls  who  stencil  on  to  the  linen  the  per- 
forated design — are  paid  as  low  as  7s.  Gd.  Orua- 
menters  make  about  12s.  weekly. 

The  deadliest   sin   in  the   labour  conditions   of 


230       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

Ireland  is  neither  tlie  low  waij,e  })ai(l  to  unskilled 
labourers  nor  that  paid  to  women.  It  is  the 
system  under  wliieh  boys  and  girls  hardly  out  of 
their  infancy  are  employed  in  the  mills  at  a  wage 
of  3s.  Gd.  a  week.  The  child  half-timer  in 
Lancashire  is  often  an  object  of  sympathy.  The 
plight  of  the  Ulster  half-timer,  however,  is  infinitely 
more  pitiable.  In  Lancashire  the  child  really 
works  half-time  every  day  of  the  week  and  goes  to 
school  during  the  other  part  of  the  day.  In  Ulster 
the  child  works  full  time  during  tliree  days  in  the 
week,  and  attends  school  on  the  remaining  days. 
The  results  which  folh^w,  when  cliildren  of  twelve 
years  ohl  or  ther(,'al)Outs  arc  kept  working  for  ten 
liours  a  day  during  three  days  in  the  week  in  a 
humid  atmospliere  of  from  70  to  80  degrees 
Fahrenheit,  might  have  been  foreseen.  Vitality 
is  slowly  squeezed  out  of  them,  and  it  is  hardly  an 
exaggeration  to  say  that  from  the  age  of  15 
upwards  they  die  like  flies.  The  death  rate  in 
Belfast  among  young  peophi  between  the  ages  of 
15  and  20  is  double  what  it  is  in  Manchester. 
That  this  is  due  neither  to  inherited  lack  of  vitality 
nor  to  the  condition  of  Belfast  houses  is  proved  by 
the  fact  that  in  the  first  five  years  of  their  life 
childi'cn  die  less  rapidly  in  Belfast  than  in 
Manchester.  Miss  Murtindale,  who  is  as  enviably 
free  from  the  vice  of  doizmatism  as  she  is  from 
that  of  melodrama,  believes  that  the  over-crowded, 
ill-ventilated  and  insufficientlj^-warmed  state  of 
some  of  the  schools  may  be  a  partial  cause  of  the 


THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKEJIS  231 

high  death-rate  among  these  boys  and  girls,  but 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  half-time  system 
is  a  ruling  cause  of  such  an  unnatural  rate  of 
mortality.  How  lal)oriou3  the  conditions  under 
which  children  are  employed  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Belfast  can  sometimes  be  will  be  best  realised 
from  an  incident  reported  by  Miss  Martindale. 
"  On  visiting  a  flax-scutching  mill  one  morning," 
she  writes,  "  I  found  a  little  girl,  aged  12  years, 
stricking  flax  with  a  rapidity  and  dexterity  which 
showed  considerable  practice.  My  inquiries  were 
met  with  what  is  far  too  common  in  Ireland — the 
most  bare-faced  untruths.  I  was  told  that  the 
child  was  at  the  mill  for  no  other  purjDose  than 
bringing  tea  to  the  workers.  On  visiting  the 
school  in  the  neighbourhood,  I  was  immediately 
told  that  this  little  girl  and  her  sister,  aged  10^ 
years,  worked  (or  alternate  weeks  at  the  scutching- 
mill,  nud  were  employed  there  from  8  a.m.  to 
8  p.m.  on  every  week  day  including  Saturday.  I 
could  not,  however,  ]iear  of  any  steps  having  been 
taken  by  the  teacher  or  managers  to  stop  this 
obviously  illegal  employment."  Miss  Martindale 
also  tells  how  in  another  factory  she  found  a  little 
girl  of  thirteen  working  full  time,  her  teacher 
apparently  having  given  her  an  illegal  certificate 
of  proficiency. 

This  is  not  the  worst  of  the  matter,  however. 
Miss  Mnrtiudale  lilts  the  curtain  upon  darker 
things  when  she  describes  how,  having  visited  a 
school  frequented  by  half-timers  and  taken  almost 


232       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

at  random  the  names  and  addresses  of  a  few  chil- 
dren, she  and  a  colleague  went  to  see  some  of  them 
in  their  homes.  "  We  found  A.  B.  suflering  from 
partial  blindness,"  she  writes,  "  with  a  curious  film 
over  both  eyes.  On  examination  the  Certifying- 
Surgeon  pronounced  her  to  be  suffering  from  a  form 
of  ophthalmia,  causing  intolerance  of  light,  which 
rendered  her  quite  unfit  for  any  kind  of  work. 
C  D.  had  lost  an  eye  as  the  result  of  an  accident 
in  the  mill.  E.  F.  was  sufiering  seriously  from 
wounded  feet ;  both  feet  were  bound  up,  and  one  of 
them  she  could  not  put  to  the  ground.  G.  H.  was 
suffering  from  general  debility,  and  was  quite  unfit 
for  work.  All  tliesc  cliildrcu  had  been  certified  l)y 
tlie  Certifying-Surgeoii  as  lit  foj-  work,  and  yet  in 
a  few  mouths  the  result  of  their  work  was  alarm- 
ingly evident." 

I  wish  we  had  a  Mrs  Browning  in  Ireland  to 
give  us  a  new  "Cry  of  tlie  Chihlren,"  to  make  us 
I'ealise  the  tragedy  of  these  bal)y-d()IT(!rs  wlio  run 
to  and  fro  in  the  heat  and  moisture  of  the  mills  as 
the  whistle  of  the  dofling  mistress  calls.  Perhaps 
Miss  Alice  Milligan,  who  has  written  with  so  much 
passion  and  vigour  on  so  many  national  themes, 
will  make  a  brave  and  bitter  music  of  this.  Indig- 
nation, says  a  fixmous  tag,  makes  verses,  and  it  is 
diiiicult  to  read  without  indignation  a  paragraph 
like  the  following,  in  which  Miss  Martindale  gives 
us  a  glimpse  of  the  life  of  a  half-timer. 

L.  M.  was  nearly  13  years  of  age,  but  her  weight  in  clothes 
was  57  lbs.  and  her  height  47  inches,  which  1  mulcrstand  is 


i 


'  ''l  r  'Oil 


m 


:/.  \  n  .*♦ 


.^l  ■ 


y^Ai 


V";i-.>^:' 


X;..;;:-S:a:V;.i.:i-:iai 


yt^.a;_ii  .'*;.'  .ItivSI 


THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKERS   233 

30|  lbs.  and  11  iiiclies  below  the  average  weight  and  height. 
I  had  her  examined  by  a  doctor,  who  reported  :  "I  have  exa- 
mined L.  M.,  and  find  her  very  ill  developed  for  a  child  of 
13  years  of  age.  She  is  hardly  up  to  the  standard  of  a  child 
of  nine  years.  She  is  ill  cared  for,  her  hair  being  in  an  unfit 
state,  and  her  body  covered  with  marks  of  scratching  to  relieve 
irritation.  Tier  heart  scorns  to  mo  to  be  dilated  and  sun'cring 
from  over  strain,  and  her  lungs  are  not  sound.  .  .  .  The  child 
is  certainly  unfit  for  any  but  the  lightest  Avork,  and  should  not 
on  any  account  be  asked  to  lift  heavy  weights  or  exert  herself 
much."  The  child  is  a  eager,  which  necessitates  her  kneeling 
on  the  damp  floor  of  the  spinning  room  and  j)lacing  the 
bobbins  in  llio  cage  as  th(i  tiollcrs  l;d<e  tliom  oil"  the  frames  ; 
she  then  phucs  tlio  cage  in  the  place  Irom  which  the  yarn- 
hawker  fetches  it.  1  have  had  a  cage  of  these  bobbins 
weighed,  and  found  it  weighed  28  lbs.  The  child  is  bare- 
footed, and  in  this  damp  room  wears  only  a  cotton  chemise, 
a  skirt  ami  the  "jumper,"  which  is  a  cotton  bodice  cut  low  at 
the  neck  and  with  short  sleeves.  On  the  night  I  saw  her 
she  complained  of  headaches  on  mill  days,  and  she  was  suffer- 
ing from  a  cold.  About  three  months  after  she  had  begun 
work  in  the  mill  she  was  taken  with  a  severe  attack  of  mill 
fever,  and  was  unable  to  work  for  three  weeks.  About  four 
weeks  ago  a  brother  died  of  spotted  fever. 

Her  family  consists  of  a  mother  who  is  not  employed  in  a 
factory,  a  father  who  is  often  out  of  work  (at  present  he  is  in 
work  and  earning  probably  about  12s.  a  week),  and  an  aunt 
earning  about  10s.  a  week,  an  elder  sister  earning  10s.  a  week, 
and  five  younger  children.  L.  M.  earns  43.  Gd.  a  week  as  a 
half-timer.  Although  the  child  is  nearly  13  years  of  age,  she 
is  only  in  the  second  stmdard  ;  mentally,  however,  she  is  very 
intelligent,  with  the  pretty  manners  and  love  of  fairy  myths 
so  often  found  amongst  the  Irish  children.  I  have  heard  on 
good  authority  that  the  wages  of  L.  M.  were  entirely  spent 
in  driidc  by  the  [)arcnts. 

It  is  obvious  that  a  good  many  of  the  things  I 
have  said  in  praise  of  the  kindly  treatment  and 


234       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

happiness  of  Irish  children  must  be  accepted  with 
reservations,  just  as  some  of  the  things  I  have  said 
with  regard  to  tlie  respect  paid  to  women  in  Irehand 
must  be  accepted  with  reservations.  Miss  Martin- 
dale  believes  that  public  opinion  in  Ireland  is  not 
opposed  to  child  labour,  but  I  think  that  public 
opinion  would  be  opposed  to  child  labour  in  its 
crueller  forms  if  only  the  facts  were  generally 
known.  There  is  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
between  sending  little  children  of  eight  years  old 
out  into  tlie  fields  to  herd  cattle,  and  sending 
children  of  eleven  and  twelve  to  put  in  a  ten 
hours'  working  day  in  the  corrupting  air  of  a 
factory.  The  one  thing  may  be  an  error  of 
thoughtlessness,  the  other  is  a  sin  of  cruelty. 
Children  in  the  country  do  not  lose  their  merriment 
through  labour :  factory  children  become  listless 
and  lifeless,  and  cease  to  be  capable  of  play. 
Observers  tell  us  that,  on  the  days  on  which  the 
lialf-timers  go  to  school,  they  prefer  during  the 
recr(!ati()n-])eriod  to  sit  down  instead  of  riiiniiiig 
about.  In  this  way  you  can  easily  distinguisli 
them  from  the  children  who  do  not  work  in  the 
mills.  In  many  cases,  however,  the  parents  of 
iialf-timers  do  not  send  their  childi-eii  to  school  at 
all.  Education  is  conipulsoiy  in  lj(»,lfast,  but  the 
average  attendance  at  the  schools  is  only  GO.G'per 
cent,  of  the  children  on  the  rolls.  The  average  for 
all  Ireland,  I  believe,  is  about  65  per  cent.,  as 
compared  with  the  85  per  cent,  of  Scotland  and 
the  84  per  cent,  of  England,  showing  that  Belfast 


THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKERS   235 

with  all  its  twentieth-century  progress  is  in  much 
the  same  position  educationally  as  the  agricultural 
parts  of  the  country  of  which  it  thinks  so  poorly. 
The  trutli  is,  there  has  been  a  blight  and  a  darkness 
ovoi-  tlio  wliolo  Iniid,  ;in(l  our  vision  has  l)co!i  dim 
and  confused  in  Belfast  as  it  has  been  elsewliere. 

With  regard  to  the  wages  of  half-timers,  the 
reader  may  remember  tliat  I  put  them  down  at 
3s.  6d.  a  week.  The  last  case  which  I  quoted 
from  Miss  Martindale's  Report  mentions  4s.  6d. 
a  week,  and  J\liss  ]\lartindale  tells  us  elsewhere  of 
a  mill  whore  "  calipers  and  doffers,  children  between 
12  and  14  years,  earned  as  half-timers  4s.  3d.  and 
4s.  9d.  a  week."  Wages  seem  to  vary  consider- 
ably. They  are,  it  may  be  some  encouragement 
to  know,  a  great  advance  on  what  they  used  to  be. 
A  friend  of  mine  was  recently  talking  to  a  ]^)elfast 
working-man  who  l)egan  work  twenty-five  years 
ago  at  tlie  nge  of  ten  at  a  weekly  wage  of  Is.  7d. 

It  was  not  my  intention  when  I  began  this  book 
to  go  into  such  minute  detail  with  regard  to  wages 
and  labour  conditions.  The  present  chapter,  in- 
deed, may  seem  a  little  out  of  place  in  a  book 
wliicli  is  a  conversation  alx)ut  people  and  things 
rather  than  a  scientific  consideration  of  economic 
and  social  conditions.  Still,  it  may  be  no  harm  to 
stress  the  fact  that  in  Ireland  we  have  a  labour 
problem  as  well  as  problems  of  education  and 
agriculture.  In  Belfast  alone  there  are,  according 
to  the  Report  of  the  Belfast  Health  Commission, 
28,000  women  and  children  employed  in  the  flax 


23G       HOME  LIRE  IN  IRELAND 

and  linen  tj-adc,  as  compared  witli  (1000  m,n. 
And  Jklfast,  as  I  have  sliown,  stands  in  danger 
of  losing  its  youthful  vitality  unless  the  conditions 
under  which  these  people  are  employed  are  quickly 
changed. 

It  seems  to  be  in  danger  of  developing  a  slum 
problem,  too,  though  it  has  until  now  been  fairly 
free  from  anything  that  could  be  described  as 
slums.  There  are  hundreds  of  houses  empty  in  the 
city  at  a  rent  of  2s.  6d.  per  week,  but,  as  a 
Town  Councillor  recently  put  it,  "  that  was  no  use 
to  a  man  with  a  family  of  four  who  had  to  sultsist 
on  lis.  a  week."  As  a  conse(|uence,  two  families 
often  crowd  into  a  small  house  of  this  sort,  with 
the  result  that  you  have,  in  the  wonls  of  another 
member  of  the  Corporation,  "  a  family  of  human 
beings  living  in  upper  apartments  without  the 
sanitary  conveniences  necessary  for  human  habita- 
tion," these  being  as  a  rule  downstairs  in  the  Ijack 
yard. 

In  Dublin  the  housing  of  the  poor  has  long  been 
one  of  the  most  pressing  of  municipal  proldems. 
There  many  of  the  line  houses  which  were  inhabited 
by  a  lavish  aristocracy,  before  the  Union  with 
England  destroyed  hope  and  eflbrt  in  the  country, 
are  now  dens  of  the  most  horrid  poverty.  Two 
members  of  the  Belfast  l^iblic  Health  Commission 
visited  Dublin  some  time  ago,  and  found  four 
families  "  living  in  a  single  room,  each  occupying 
a  corner."  1  do  not  think  this  was  an  isolated 
instance. 


THE  I.IVES  OF  THE  WORKEIIS   237 

III  tlie  country  towns  tlic  poor  may  be  happier 
in  their  houses,  l)ut  the  ruthless  sweatiug-emj)ioycr 
is  not  unknown  even  there.  I  know  of  one  in- 
stance of  an  employer  who  has  founded  a  new 
industry,  and  who  keeps  his  people  working  from 
early  in  the  morning  until  eight  at  night.  The 
people  dare  not  complain,  for  there  is  no  other 
industry  in  the  town  to  afford  an  alternative 
market  to  their  labour. 

To  come  to  the  workers  in  the  country  itself,  the 
agricultural  labourer  in  Ireland  is  very  poorly  paid 
com[)ared  to  the  farm  labourer  in  Scotland,  Wales, 
or  illngland.  J\Ir  Wilson  Fox's  second  ]5oard  of 
Trade  lieport  on  the  earnings  of  agricultural 
labourers  estimates  the  average  weekly  wages  in 
the  four  countries  as  follows  : — 

Scotland  .  .  19s.  3d. 

l^higland  .  .  18s.  3d. 

Wales  .  .  17s.  3d. 

Ireland  .  .  10s.  lid. 

These  wages,  I  may  say,  include  the  value  of 
all  payments  in  kind,  such  as  free  houses,  food, 
and  so  forth.  It  is  a  common  thing  for  a  farm 
labourer  to  be  paid  six,  seven  or  eight  shillings 
a  week,  with  a  free  cottage  (worth  from  Is.  to 
Is.  6d.  weekly)  and  meals  at  the  farmer's  house 
extra.  He  may  also  have  a  little  patch  of 
garden  or  a  ridge  of  potatoes  in  one  of  his  master's 
fields.  His  wife  and  children,  too,  contribute 
something  to  the  family  income.  During  the 
turnip-thinning  season  a  woman  working  a  ten  or 


238       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

eleven  hours'  day  may  earn  tenpence  a  day,  and  if 
slie  is  strong  enough  to  pull  llax  she  may  make 
anything  up  to  two  shillings  a  day  during  a  week 
or  a  fortnight  of  the  year.  In  ordinary  women's 
work,  however,  I  believe  tenpence  a  day  is  con- 
sidered a  good  wage.  Young  boys  may  earn  a  few 
pence  a  day,  driving  carts  or  lielping  with  the 
corn,  and  doing  various  odd  jol)s  during  the  busy 
season.  The  figures  1  have  given  I  have  taken 
from  one  of  the  prosperous  counties.  ■  Probaljly,  in 
counties  like  Mayo,  where  the  average  weekly 
wage  of  a  farm  labourer  is  only  8s.  9d.,  women's 
and  children's  wages  are  correspondingly  low. 

There  is  other  woi'k  besides  agricultural  labour 
to  b(i  had  in  soiiKi  of  the  c<Minli-y  [)la(;eH.  'I'his 
iiK'luihis  cottage  work — like  endjroidery,  knitting, 
and  the  machining  and  finishing  of  shirts  and 
collars — three  kinds  of  work  which  are  sent  down 
by  the  manul'actui'ers  in  the  l)ig  towns  to  be  done 
cheaply  by  the  women  in  the  rural  districts.  JVliss 
MarLiiidale  made  exhaustive  incpdries  in  1907  into 
the  wages  and  other  lal)Our  conditions  of  these 
outworkers,  taking  the  County  of  Donegal  as  her 
field  of  study.  She  found  that  women  who  em- 
broidered handkerchiefs  were  paid  at  the  rate  of  7d. 
a  dozen,  and  that  a  dozen  handkerchiefs  would  be  a 
fair  day's  work  for  one  woman.  Monograms  could 
be  embroidered  at  the  rate  of  half-a-dozen  a  day,  and 
for  these  half-dozen  4d.  would  be  paid.  Initials 
on  handkerchiefs  were  paid  for  at  the  rate  of  id. 
each,  and  about  ten  of  these  could  be  finished  in  a 


THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKEllS   239 

clay.  Workiui^'  on  a  muslin  tray-cloth,  a  woman 
could  earn  lOd.  for  two  days'  work  ;  on  a  side- 
Iward  cloth,  she  could  earn  from  4d.  to  6d.  a  day ; 
on  a  tahlc-cloth,  3s.  in  four  days;  and  on  ladies' 
skiits,  about  3s.  Gd.  in  a  week.  For  knitting  men's 
socks,  women  were  paid  Is.  Gd.  a  dozen,  and  a 
worker  could  seldom  knit  more  than  1  pair  or  1^ 
pairs  in  a  day.  The  finest  socks,  which  required 
more  labour,  were  paid  for  at  the  rate  of  4s.  a 
dozen.  Gloves  were  paid  for  at  the  rate  of  from  2s. 
to  2s.  Gd.  a  dozen  pairs,  a  i)air  and  a  half  being 
regarded  as  a  good  day's  work. 

"  In  hand  knitting,"  writes  Miss  JMartindale, 
"the  usual  day's  wage  varies  from  l|d.  to  4d.,  but 
the  number  of  hours  worked  are  far  longer  than  in 
si>rigging  (eml)roidery),  and  we  heard  of  work 
being  carried  on  Irom  (S  a,.m.  to  10  p.m." 

Coming  to  the  machimiig  and  finishing  of  shirts 
and  collars,  we  lind  tlie  avcj-age  wage  <as  high  as 
lOd.  or  Is.  a  day,  but  this  often  means  a  working 
day  wliich  begins  early  in  the  morning  and  lasts 
till  midnight. 

These  wages  seem  wretched  enough,  but  they 
do  not  sufficiently  denote  the  wretched  condition, 
economically  speaking,  of  the  w^orkers  in  some  of 
the  cottage  industries  of  Donegal.  A  good  many 
readers  probably  know  already  that  the  work  is 
usually  distributed  among  the  outworkers  by  shop- 
keepers whom  the  town  manufacturers  a])])oint  as 
tlieir  local  agents.  JMiss  JMartindale  describes  one 
district,   for    instance,   as    "  almost   studded    with 


240        HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

little  sliopa  in  which  sprigging  for  distribution  to 
outworkers  is  to  l)e  seen  on  the  slielves  and  in  the 
windows,  together  with  the  ordinary  groceries  and 
draperies."  Shop-keepers,  of  course,  find  it  very- 
profitable  to  undertake  these  agencies,  for  not 
only  do  they  make  a  10  per  cent,  commission  on 
the  work  they  give  out — which  may  be  anything 
from  £20  worth  to  XI 00  wortli  of  work  per  month 
— but  their  Imsiness  is  greatly  increased  by  the 
fact  that  a  vast  number  of  outworkers  become 
their  steady  customers.  The  shop-keeper  agents, 
unfortunately,  are  not  always  satisfied  with  these 
two  streams  of  prosperity.  Many  of  them  do  not 
pay  the  women  workers  in  wages  at  all,  but  in 
goods  out  of  the  shop — often  })riced  far  beyond 
their  value.  These  shop-keepers — I  do  not,  of 
course,  mean  all  the  shop-keeper  agents,  but  the 
many  unscrupulous  people  among  them — are  the 
worst  sort  of  gombeen  men.  'I'hey  know  that 
ready  money  is  a  rare  thing  in  the  labourers' 
cottages  and  on  the  small  farms,  and  they  allow 
the  country  people  to  get  heavily  into  their  deljt, 
knowing  that  the  men  of  the  house  will  bring  a 
lump  of  money  home  with  them  from  the  British 
harvests,  and  that  the  women  will  Ijc  able  to  work 
off  the  rest  of  the  debt  by  doing  sprigging  and 
knitting  work. 

Cash-payments  for  goods  are  the  exception 
rather  than  the  rule  in.  some  places,  and  debts  are 
allowed  to  run  up  to  the  extent  of  .£20  or  £30. 
It  is  a  fact,  of  course,  that   in  many  poor  parts  of 


THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKERS  241 

Ireland  the  people  could  not  exist  at  all  were  it 
not  for  the  long  credit  permitted  by  the  shop- 
keepers, and  so  the  gombeen  shop-keeper  may  be 
looked  on  from  one  point  of  view  as  a  public  bene- 
factor. On  the  other  hand,  though  some  of  the 
shop-keepers  arc  reaBonal)ly  just  and  generous  in 
their  use  of  the  credit  system,  it  is  well  known 
that  many  of  them  enrich  themselves  like  the  most 
extortionate  moneylenders  at  the  expense  of  all 
the  poor  and  comparatively  poor  peo})le  in  their 
dislii(;t.  The  lattc.i- — especially  when  they  arc 
outworlcers — are  encouraged  to  l)uy  goods,  which 
they  would  never  dream  of  taking  if  they  had  to 
pay  cash  down  for  them  instead  of  owing  the 
money.  "  One  priest,"  writes  Miss  Martindale, 
"informed  us  that  lie  had  felt  o])liged  to  strongly 
denounce  the  truck  system  from  llic^  altai',  because 
it  was  so  prevalent  in  his  parisJi.  He  stated  tlu\t 
it  was  useless  for  more  than  one  girl  in  a  family 
to  have  a  knitting-machine,  because  the  larger 
income  thus  obtained  consisted  only  of  draperies 
and  useless  fineries.  Coin  was  not  given  for 
wages,  and  as  several  of  the  employers  did  not 
deal  in  fiour  or  meal,  these  goods,  which  were 
necessities,  were  not  given  in  lieu  of  coin."  Miss 
]\lartindale  interviewed  154  outworkers  in  the 
course  of  her  inquiries  into  the  truck  system,  and 
in  104  instances  truck  was  admitted,  in  48  cases 
it  was  denied.  It  is  all  the  moie  amazing  to  find 
Mr  W.  J,  D.  Walker,  the  Industrial  Adviser  and 
Inspector  to  the  Irish  Congested  Districts  Jioard 


242        HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

when  giving  evidence  last  year  l)efore  the  Select 
Committee  of  the  British  House  of  Commons  on 
Home  Work,  saying,  in  regard  to  the  Donegal  out- 
workers, that  "  there  is  not  very  much  truck,  and 
I  do  not  think  myself  that  they  are  badly  treated 
in  that  way."  Miss  Martindale  shows  clearly 
that  the  credit  system  is  ol'lcn  workiHl  in  such  a 
way  as  to  be  merely  truck  in  disguise. 

Some  of  the  shopkeepers  supply  only  their  own 
customers  and  debtors  with  sprigging  and  knitting 
work  ;  at  least,  they  give  all  the  best  paid  work  to 
their  own  customers.  Sometimes,  in  these  shops 
payment  money  is  handed  over  the  counter,  but  it 
must  be  handed  back  at  once — all  or  nearly  all  of 
it — for  no  more  outwork  will  be  given  to  those 
who  take  their  money  away  with  them.  "Con- 
tinually," declares  Miss  lAlartindale,  "we  were 
told  that  unless  the  wages  were  left  at  the  shop 
no  work  would  be  given." 

Miss  Whitworth,  a  colleague  of  Miss  IMartindale's, 
Sfives  an  account  of  an  interview  she  had  with  a 
dispensary  nurse  who  put  the  matter  in  a  nut- 
shell. "  AH  the  agents  round  here  have  shops," 
said  the  nurse,  "  and  they  will  only  give  out  the 
best  work  to  customers;  in  fact  ihey  want  you  to 
leave  all  your  money  in  the  shop.  Now,  <Hily 
yesterday  a  girl  came  to  me  and  said  :  '  You're 
doing  sprigging  for  Mr  A.,  and  you'll  have  to 
leave  all  your  money  with  him,  for  he  has  saitl 
he's  going  to  give  out  no  more  work  to  a  sewer 
unless  she  gives  the  money  Imck  to  him.'     I  said, 


THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKERS   243 

'  I'll  spend  my  money  where  I  like,'  but  you  see 
I'm  not  depeudeut  on  the  sprigging,  but  the  poor 
folk  who  are  have  to  spend  it  all  at  the  agent's 
shop.  There's  many  a  poor  mother  and  girl  who 
have  to  buy  articles  they  don't  want,  and  have  no 
money  for  what  they  want  for  other  things." 

I  know  that  optimists  will  argue  tliat  the  out- 
workers of  Donegal  are  at  least  better  off  than 
they  were  before  the  cottage  industries  were  intro- 
duced among  tliem.  This  may  be  true  enough, 
but  it  does  not  alter  the  fiuit  that  a  great  number 
of  tlicsc  workcu's  :ire  l)eiiig  most  flMgranlJy  injured 
both  in  ])0cket  and  in  character.  There  is  nothing 
that  saps  the  independence  of  average  human 
beings  to  a  greater  degree  than  to  deprive  them  of 
the  right  to  take  their  earnings  into  their  own 
hands  and  to  spend  them  as  they  will.  The  Irish 
Agricultural  Organisation  Society  and  Sinn  F6in 
have  done  something  to  arouse  public  opinion 
against  the  gombeen  man,  and,  the  former  at  least 
with  its  co-operative  credit  banks,  to  make  him  a 
less  maleficent  figure  in  Irish  rural  life. 

While  I  am  on  the  sul)ject  of  the  Irish  workers, 
it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  mention  the  fact 
that  no  body  of  the  people  of  Ireland  serves  its 
ideals  more  faithfully  than  they.  In  Belfast  you 
will  find  the  sturdiest  Orangemen  and  the  sturdiest 
Socialists  as  well  as  the  sturdiest  Nationalists 
among  the  working  classes.  So  far  as  I  have 
seen,  I  believe  they  are  more  capable  of  absorp- 
tion in  political  ideas — ideas  apart  from  all  thought 


244       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  self-interest — than  any  other  class  in  Ireland. 
Many  of  them  gamble  and  many  of  them  drink, 
and  some  of  them  beat  their  wives,  as  is  the 
custom  in  civilised  countries,  but  these  are  the 
bad  examples.  There  is  a  radical  soundness  in 
the  Irish  working  people,  a  belief  in  principle, 
a  generosity  of  pur|)ose,  which  will  be  invaluable 
to  any  Icadcu'  who  can  give  them  a  great  cause 
to  follow.  In  Belfast,  Cork,  and  elsewhere,  great 
numbers  of  the  most  intelligent  of  them  are  at 
present  turning  with  hope  to  a  kind  of  inter- 
national Socialism.  I  do  not  think  this  tendency 
will  continue  long,  however,  for  the  workers  are 
too  quick-witted  not  to  see  that  international 
brotherhood  is  meaningless  except  as  a  brother- 
hood of  free  nations.  Some  of  the  Oranoe  workers 
in  Belfast  have  already  come  to  see  the  necessity 
of  a  national  basis  for  any  real  progress,  industrial, 
social  or  intellectual. 

What  the  new  sort  of  Oranofcman  is  learning 
by  thinking  out,  the  LiuKirick  lal)ourcr  knows  by 
instinct.  Collectors  for  the  Gaelic  Leaii^ue  funds 
in  Limerick  tell  me  that  nowhere  are  they  so 
sure  of  a  generous  reception  as  in  the  houses  of 
the  workers  in  tlic  ]ioor  parts  of  the  city.  A 
collector  told  me  of  one  instance  where  he  had 
begun  with  the  usual  remark,  "  1  suppose  you 
believe  in  the  Irish  language  revival '{ "  and  a 
working-man  had  replied,  "  And  why  the  hell 
wouldn't  I  ? "  as  though  it  were  an  insult  even 
to  put  the  question  to  him.     This,  he  said,  was 


THE  LIVES  OF  THE  WORKERS   245 

a  somewhat  forcible  expression  of  the  spirit  he 
had  foiuid  general  among  the  working  people  of 
the  city. 

Before  I  close  this  chapter  I  slioiild  like  to 
meulioii  yet  another  fact — rcnlised  by  only  a  very 
few  people — with  rcgjird  to  the  working-classes 
in  Ireland.  It  is  that,  greatly  as  the  population 
of  Ireland  has  declined  in  recent  years,  the 
numbers  of  the  workers  engaged  in  the  manu- 
facturing industries  has  decreased  in  an  even 
greater  pro})ortion.  Between  the  census  of  1881 
and  that  of  1901  the  principal  manufacturing 
industries  of  Ireland,  in  so  far  as  they  afforded  a 
means  of  livelihood  to  the  population,  decrensed 
by  17  per  cent,  wdiile  the  population  itself  de- 
creased by  only  —  I  use  the  word  comparatively — 
13.8  per  cent.  \n  the  (lax  and  linen  industry, 
for  instance,  which  is  always  held  up  as  a  model 
of  prosperity,  the  number  of  persons  employed 
decreased  during  the  twenty  years  mentioned 
from  92,650  to  75,100.  In  the  leather  trades 
the  number  of  workers  went  down  from  30,766 
to  19,891.  The  iron  and  steel  industry,  which 
includes  shipbuilding,  is  the  only  industry  of  any 
size  which  has  given  increased  employment. 
Since  the  last  census  the  record  of  the  woollen 
trade  has  probably  improved  as  a  result  of  the 
industrial  revival,  but  even  here  the  loss  during 
twenty  years  has  hardly  been  made  up  yet. 

1  must  apologise  for  putting  so  many  figures 
into  this  chapter.     I  decided,  however,  that  they 


246       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

might  carry  conviction  with  many  readers  who 
would  be  inclined  to  dismiss  statements  of  facts 
which  had  no  warrant  but  my  own  observation 
as  worthless.  Besides,  these  figures  have  some- 
thing of  novelty  in  a  book  about  Ireland.  Most 
people  who  write  books  about  Ireland  seem  to 
set  out  with  the  assumption  that  Ireland  is  an 
exclusively  agricultural  country,  and  their  figures 
are  nearly  all  concerned  with  either  laud  or 
education.  As  a  result  the  Irish  working-man 
has  been  unduly  ignored,  and  very  little  public 
light  has  been  thrown  ujion  his  circumstances. 


CHAPTER  XV 

SINN    FifllN  :    THE    NEW    NOTE    IN    POLITICS 

Every  one  who  comes  to  Irish  politics  from  the 
outside,  seems  to  find  them  a  little  difficult  to 
uiidcr.sLand.  Tliis  perplexity,  indeed,  is  not  un- 
known among  the  Irish  people  themselves.  The 
reason  is  simple  enough.  Logically,  there  are  only 
two  scliools  of  Irish  politics — the  Nationalist  and 
the  Unionist.  Logically,  the  Nationalist  believes 
that  Ireland  lias  an  inherent  right  to  be  governed 
by  the  li'ish  people  in  the  iiiLerests  of  Ireland. 
The  htgic.nl  Unionist,  on  the  other  hand,  believcH 
that  Enghind  has  an  inherent — or,  at  least,  an 
adherent — right  to  govern  Ireland  in  the  interest 
of  either  Ireland  or  herself — it  never  seems  to  be 
precisely  set  forth  which.  This  being  so,  it  is  clear 
that  the  dividing  line  in  Irish  politics  ought  to 
fall  between  those  who  believe  in  Ireland's  right 
to  be  a  nation,  and  those  who  believe  in  Ireland's 
fate  to  be  an  English  province  or  shire. 

Ireland,  unhappily,  is  not  inhabited  to  more 
than  a  comparatively  small  extent  by  logical 
Unionists  and  Nationalists — pro-Ireland  men  and 
pro-England  men.  Outside  the  ranks— perl laps, 
even  inside  the  ranks — of  tlie  Sinn  Fein  parly,  it 

217 


248       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

is  a  suificieiitly  common  thing  to  find  a  Nationalist 
witli  a  touch  of  Unionism  in  liis  political  faith  ; 
and,  as  for  Unionists,  the  logical  worshipper  of 
England  and  despiser  of  Ireland  is  becoming  more 
and  more  rare,  and  we  find  Unionists  breaking- 
out  into  Nationalist  enthusiasms  in  all  directions, 
falling  in  with  here  the  Devolutionist  proposals  of 
Lord  Dunraven  and  his  fellow-landlords,  here  with 
Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  co-operative  schemes,  and 
here  with  the  language  or  industrial  revival. 
Thus,  while  the  logical  extremes  of  Unionism  and 
Nationalism  are  as  wide  apart  as  the  poles,  the 
moderate,  or  middle,  men  of  l)oth  parties  are 
becoming  more  and  more  indistinguisliabh)  froju 
each  other.  It  would  scmietimes  l)e  a  quite 
pardonable  accident  to  mistake  a  moderate 
Nationalist  for  a  moderate  Unionist,  and  the 
other  way  about. 

I'he  Sinn  Kcin  policy  may  be  descril)cd  as 
at  once  the  most  extreme  and  the  most  moderate 
form  of  Nationalism.  It  is  the  most  moderate 
because  it  aims  at  uniting  Irishmen  of  all 
creeds  and  classes  on  a  common  platform — or  a 
progressive  series  of  common  platforms — for  Irish 
ends.  Sinn  Fc^in  meets  the  Unionist,  who  will 
not  consent  to  work  for  the  political  independence 
of  Ireland,  with  the  question  :  "  Well,  but  even 
if  you  do  not  believe  in  helping  Ireland  to  be 
politically  self-reliant,  is  that  any  reason  why 
you  should  not  desire  to  see  her  intellectually 
self-reliant,   industrially    self-reliant,  economically 


SINN  FlilN  249 

self-reliant  ?  "  IvecogiiisiDg  tliat  many  men  and 
women  are  Unionists  from  patriotic  motives,  it  says 
to  them  :  "  Show  your  Unionism  at  election  times 
as  much  as  you  like,  but  be  sure  to  remember 
to  show  your  patriotism  on  other  occasions  by 
hel})ing  Ireland  on  the  path  to  intellectual  love- 
liness, to  economic  health,  to  industrial  inde- 
pendence." Eealising  that  Ireland's  health  and 
wealth  depend  on  Unionist  manufacturers,  county 
councillors,  Poor  Law  guardians,  school-masters, 
clergymen,  farmers,  artisans,  labourers,  journalists, 
(h)ctors  and  shop-keepers,  no  less  than  on 
Nationalist  manufaetiinTS,  county  council  hjrs, 
Poor  Law  gunrdians,  school-masters,  clergymen, 
farmers,  artisans,  labourers,  journalists,  doctors  and 
shop-keepers,  it  reminds  men  of  all  classes,  creeds 
and  parties  th;i.t  they  have  a  common  country 
to  serve,  and  stresses  the  points  uj)on  wliicli  they 
may  agree  rather  than  the  points  upon  which 
they  must  disagreee. 

Thus  it  calls  upon  the  Irish  manufacturer  to 
use  Irish  materials  as  far  as  is  possible  both 
in  the  wares  he  makes  and  in  the  wares  he 
buys.  It  expects,  for  instance,  that  the  manu- 
facturer of  caps  will  not  only  make  these  of 
Irish  cloth  and  Irish  thread,  but  that  in  his 
advertisements  and  correspondence  he  will  use 
Irish  paper  and  the  work  of  Irish  printers,  and 
that  his  factory  will  be  built  of  Irish  material. 
To  those  who  sit  on  public  bodies  and  have 
the  spending  of  public  money  it  appeals  to  give 


250       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

a  preference  in  their  contracts  to  Irish  contractors 
and  Irish  manufacturers,  and,  where  doctors  or 
nurses  or  emph^yees  of  any  sort  are  wanted, 
to  people  with  a  knowledge  of  the  Irish  language. 
It  arranged  last  year  for  a  conference  of  Poor 
Law  Unions,  at  which  standard  regulations  might 
1)6  agreed  upon  concerning  nil  food-stulls,  medi- 
cines, dressings  and  so  forth  required  in  workhouses 
and  infirmaries,  in  order  that  at  least  preferential 
treatment  might  l^e  guaranteed  to  Irish  contractors. 
Similarly,  clergymen  and  schoolmasters  are  urged 
to  give  the  teaching  of  the  Irish  language,  Irish 
history  and  Irish  literature  its  due  place  in  the 
schools,  and  if  an  organ  is  required  in  a  church 
or  a  billiard  table  in  a  young  man's  society, 
an  effort  is  made  to  see  that  the  oroan  and  the 
billiard-table  shall  be  of  Irish  manufacture. 

"  Burn  everything  that  comes  from  England," 
was  Dean  Swift's  advice  to  the  Irish  ])e()ple  in 
the  eight(!eiitli  century,  "  exccjtt  tlie  pcojdi!  and 
tlie  coals,"  And  this  is  the  most  mibtaiit  expres- 
sion of  the  Sinn  Fein  policy  on  its  industrial 
side  at  the  present  moment,  Sinn  Fein  supports 
the  industrial  revival  both  as  a  non-political 
and  as  a  political  movement — one  of  tiiose 
necessary  paradoxes  in  human  alTairs.  "  Buy 
Irish  goods  because  they  are  Irish,"  it  says  non- 
politically  to  all  Irish  men  and  women  who 
desire  to  see  their  country  prosperous.  "Buy 
Irish  goods  because  they  are  not  ll^nglish,  and, 
if  you    cannot    get    Irish  goods,   Iniy    French    or 


SINN  FEIN  251 

German  or  Americau,  or  indeed  any  goods  in 
the  world  rather  than  English.  Do  so  as  long 
as  England  refuses  to  keep  the  terms  of  the 
Renunciation  Act  of  1783,  in  which  she  laid  it 
down  '  that  the  right  claimed  by  the  people  of 
Ii(>land  to  Ih>.  hound  ordy  hy  laws  enacted  by 
his  JMajcsty  and  the  Parliament  of  that  Kingdom 
is  hereby  declared  to  be  established,  and  as- 
certairied  for  ever,  and  shall  at  no  time  hereafter 
be  questioned  or  ([uestionaljle ' " — such  is  the 
nicssaiie  of  Sinn  I^'din,  considerini»'  tlui  industrial 
revival  as  a  political  weapon. 

Sinn  i*'('in,  indeed,  stands  for  both  nationality 
and  politics,  and  its  chief  wisdom  is  to  be  found 
in  its  recognition  of  the  fact  that  nationality 
is  a  much  l)igger  thing  than  politics.  Its  ])olicy 
will  certainly  put  the  convinced  Unionist  in 
a  very  awkward  position  during  the  next  few 
years,  for,  of  course,  much  as  the  Unionist  may 
be  inclined  to  buy  an  Irish  pair  of  boots  or 
a  packet  of  Irisli  envelopes  with  the  object 
of  helping  Ireland,  he  is  strongly  disinclined  to 
buy  an  Irish  pair  of  Ijoots  or  a  packet  of  Irish 
envelopes  with  the  result  of  boycotting  England. 
And  the  irony  of  his  position  lies  in  that  fact 
that,  when  he  wishes  to  help  Ireland,  he  cannot 
help  agreeing  with  the  Sinn  Fein  Nationalists 
ill  conduct,  however  nuich  he  may  disagree  with 
them  in  regard  to  some  of  the  motives  of  their 
conduct. 

The  Unionist  dilemma  was  made  manifest  in  a 


252       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

trivial  way  in  a  letter  that  appeared  in  one  of  the 
Unionist  papers  some  three  years  ago,     Sinn  Fein, 
out  of  its  versatile  and  inventive  energy,  has  set 
on  foot  a  temperance  propaganda,  which  aims,  not 
only  at  making  Irisli  men  and  women  good  citizens, 
but  at  diminishing  the  revenue  that  the  British 
exchequer    annually    draws    from     Ireland.      Tlie 
Irish  drink  l)ill   contributes   something  like  five- 
and-a-half  million   pounds   a  year  in  taxatic^n  to 
the  British  Treasury,  and  the  Sinn  Fein  argument 
is  that,  if  this  amount  were  considerably  reduced, 
Ireland  would  become  a  financial  loss  to  England 
instead  of  being,  as  at  present,  a  financial  gain,  so 
that  England  would   have  yet  one  more  practical 
reason  for  letting  Ireland  go.     Seeing  the  dilemma 
in  which  this  feature  of  the  Sinn  Fdin  policy  would 
place  Irisli  Unionists,  a  Nationalist  with  a  sense  of 
humour  wrote  in  to  one  of  the  Belfast  papers  over 
an  aggressively  Unionist  pseudonym,  calling  the 
attention  of  the  readers  of  the  pai)er  to  the  fact 
that,    now    that    Nationalists    wca'c    proposing    to 
drink  less  and  so  injure  the  British  Treasury,  it 
behoved  loyal  citizens  to  drink  more  and  so  help 
to  make  the  Union  pay.     Impossible   as  it  may 
seem,  the   Unionist  paper  to  which  the  letter  was 
sent   publishetl   it,   and   there   was  a  good  deal   of 
laughing  among  the  wise.     The  incident,  of  course, 
is    only   trifiing,   but    it    serves    to    illustrate   the 
troubles  that  beset  the  path  of  the  Unionist,  whom 
the  Sinn  Feiner  acclaims  as  a  Nationalist,  will  he 
or  nill  he,  in  so  far  as  he  helps  Ireland  by  being 


SINN  FEIN  253 

sober  or  chaste,  or  by  buying  Irish  tobacco  or 
flour,  or  by  doiug  any  good  work  that  benefits  his 
country.     Allingham's  couplet, 

"  We're  one  at  heart  if  you  be  Ireland's  friend, 
There  are  but  two  groat  parties  in  the  end," 

is  quoted  on  the  cover  of  Leahhar  na  hEireann, 
(The  Irish  Year  Book) — the  valuable  hand-book 
of  facts,  figures  and  theories  issued  annually  by 
the  National  Council  of  Sinn  Fein — and  this  may 
be  taken  as  the  motto  and  central  ])rinciple  of 
Sinn  F6in  regarded  from  the  point  of  view,  not  of 
politics,  but  of  nationality. 

Sinn  F^in,  then,  recognises  in  nationality  some- 
thing much  more  wonderful  and  even  necessary 
than  politics.  It  holds,  however,  that  nationality 
must  have  its  political  phase  and  expression,  and 
that  no  nation  ever  yet  became  exuberantly  itself, 
exuberantly  a  thing  of  beauty  and  use  in  the 
family  of  nations,  unless  it  was  politically  free. 
Its  aim  as  a  political  organisation  is  consequently 
the  independence  of  Ireland,  and  as  a  means  to 
that  end  it  proposes  the  destruction  of  the 
machinery  of  foreign  government  in  Ireland. 
Not  that  it  is  princi[)ally  a  destructive  or  war 
policy.  Nationalists  are  anxious  for  peace,  accord- 
ing to  Mr  Arthur  Griffith,  the  political  thinker  of 
genius  who  edits  "  Sinn  Fein,"  and  who  originated 
the  Sinn  Fein  policy  in  the  columns  of  "  The 
United  Irishman,"  but  before  terms  of  peace  can 
be  discussed,  he  continues,  in  a  phrase  reminiscent 


254       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  John  Mitcliel,  "  England  must  take  lier  one 
liand  away  from  Ireland's  throat,  and  her  other 
hand  out  of  Ireland's  pocket."  In  other  words, 
let  England  observe  the  terms  by  which  she  bound 
herself  in  the  Renunciation  Act  of  1783 — an  Act 
which  has  been  violated,  but  which  could  not 
even  legally  and  constitutionally  be  repealed  with- 
out the  consent  of  the  Irish  people — and  when 
Ireland's  rights  have  been  restored,  including,  dT 
course,  an  independent  Parliament  and  exchequer, 
then  ways  and  means  for  the  future  may  be  made 
matter  for  discussion. 

I  am  giving  here  what  I  understand  to  be  the 
ollicial  attitude  of  Sinn  l*\'iii  on  the  (piestion 
of  Anglo-Irish  relations.  Individually,  however, 
many  rank-and-file  Sinn  Fdiners  put  very  little 
trust  in  legal  and  constitutional  arguments,  and 
claim  Ireland's  right  to  be  a  separate  and  free 
nation  as  a  right  given  by  God,  without  troubling 
about  its  other  aspect  as  a  right  confirmed  by 
England.  At  the  same  time,  Sinn  Eciners  of  all 
ways  of  thinking  are  agreed  to  work  on  a  common 
platform  for  the  independence  of  Ireland,  the 
minimum  interpretation  of  independence  being 
that  which  is  laid  down  in  the  Constitution  of 
1782  and  the  Uenunciation  Act  of  1783.  Seeing 
that  England  is  unlikely  to  consent  to  observe  the 
terms  of  1783  of  her  own  accord,  Sinn  Fein  pro- 
poses to  make  it  easier  for  England  to  observe  them 
than  not  to  observe  them.  Ireland,  it  declares, 
must  no  longer  send  representatives  to  the  British 


SINN  FEIN  255 

Parliament  to  plead  to  indifTerent  ears  the  cause 
of  Irish  freedom,  since  to  send  representatives  to 
Westminster  is  not  only  useless  in  practice,  but  is 
an  apparent  acquiescence  in  the  terms  of  the  Act 
of  Union.  Moreover,  it  holds  that  for  Irishmen 
to  attend  in  a  foreign  Parliament  and  to  take  an 
oath  of  allegiance  to  a  King,  who  is  no  longer  the 
head  of  a  free  Irish  constitution,  but  a  symbol  of 
foreign  conquest,  is  a  lie  and  an  act  of  national 
dishonour.  Irish  politics,  according  to  the  Sinn 
Ff'in  ideal,  must  not  be  allowed  to  rest  on  a 
national  falseliood,  which  lias  already  done  so 
mu(;h  to  c()ii'U[)t  and  confuse  the  political  thought 
of  the  country,  1)ut  must  be  placed  on  the  far 
securer  basis  of  truth  and  honour  and  reason. 

Hence  the  central  suggestion  of  political  Sinn 
Fein  is  the  withdrawal  of  the  Irish  representatives 
from  Westminster  and  the  setting-up  of  a  de  facto 
Irish  Parliament  in  Dublin  instead.  It  is  often 
asked  what  such  a  Parliament  as  this  could  do, 
and  it  is  obvious  that  without  the  support  of  the 
great  majority  of  the  people  of  Ireland  in  all  four 
provinces  it  could  do  very  little.  Granted  this 
support,  however,  it  could  do  much  towards  organ- 
ising Ireland  into  an  efficient  and  prosperous 
nation.  It  would  be  a  deliberative  assembly  whose 
will  would  have  the  force  of  law  with  those  who 
believed  in  it.  It  could  frame  measures,  for  in- 
stance, for  the  promotion  of  education  suited  to 
the  needs  of  the  Irish  people,  and  these  measures 
would,  if  the  people  \vere  behind  tliem,  be  adopted 


256       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

by  the  majority  of  managers  in  the  primary  scliools, 
by  the  majority  of  county  and  urban  councils  in 
the  technical  schools,  and  by  at  least  one — and 
perhaps  two,  for  there  are  those  who  believe  that 
Protestant  Ulster  will  be  overwhelmingly  national 
in  another  generation — of  the  universities.  It 
could  also  encourage  a  genuine  national  education 
system  by  demanding  in  all  candidates  for  offices 
in  the  pay  of  public  bodies — and  these  include 
doctors,  engineers,  solicitors,  nurses,  labourers, 
clerks,  librarians,  teachers,  to  name  no  others — a 
knowledge  of  the  language  and  history  of  Ireland. 
It  could,  if  necessary,  decree  the  holding  of  ex- 
aminations for  what  would  in  effect  be  an  Irish 
National  Civil  Service.  It  would  have  an  equal 
power  of  organising  the  country  in  support  of 
Irish  industries  and  agriculture  by  means  of  the 
local  councils  and  by  the  appointment  of  Irish 
consuls  in  all  the  great  capitals  of  the  world  to 
look  after  the  interests  of  the  country.  The  cost 
of  these  consuls,  it  is  estimated,  would  be  much 
less  than  the  present  cost  of  sending  Parliamentary 
representatives  to  Westminster.  Supported  by  a 
progressive  and  industrious  Ireland,  they  might 
not  at  first  be  recognised  by  the  various  foreign 
governments,  but  would  become  usefully  known 
to  foreign  traders  and  in  foreign  markets. 

Ireland  also,  according  to  the  Sinn  F^iners, 
requires  a  National  Stock  Exchange,  where  Irish 
enterprises  can  be  floated  ;  a  National  Banking 
System,    which   will    look    not   with    exceptional 


SINN  FEIN  257 

suspicion  but  witli  exceptional  favour  on  Irish 
industrial  undertakings  ;  a  National  Railway 
System  and  a  National  Mercantile  Marine,  which, 
instoiul  of  ]uiin[)eriiig  and  penalising  the  home 
producer  at  every  turn,  wouhl  help  aud  encourage 
him.  There  is  scarcely  any  limit,  indeed,  to 
what  the  Irish  Parliament  could  discuss  and  do. 
It  could  do  everything  except  levy  taxes  with  the 
sanction  of  the  policeman,  but  the  Irish  people, 
like  many  another  people,  have  shown  before  now 
tliat,  when  they  believe  in  a  principle,  they  are 
willing  to  tax  themselves  in  its  support,  and  it  is 
likely  that  the  Parliament  would  not  be  at  a  loss 
for  money  in  furtherance  of  its  schemes.  One  of 
these  schemes,  which  is  worth  noticing,  by  the  way, 
is  the  institution  of  national  arbitration  courts,  to 
wjiicli  tlic  ])eo|)l(;  coidd  ca,ny  their  civil  suits,  thus 
refusing  in  so  far  as  is  possible  to  recognise  the 
foreign  law-courts. 

Obviously,  in  a  country  organised  on  Sinn  Fc^in 
lines,  Irishmen  would  enter  the  British  army  and 
navy  and  police  force  in  smaller  and  smaller 
numbers.  The  Irishman  who  would  do  so,  indeed, 
would  be  regarded  as  was  an  Italian  in  the 
Austrian  army  in  the  days  of  Garibaldi,  and 
could  never  hope  for  employment  in  Ireland 
in  his  later  years  as  a  pensioner.  Until  the 
present  day,  Irish  brains  have  gone  largely  into 
the  British  Civil  Service,  and  Irish  muscle  into 
the  British  army.  It  is  one  of  the  objects  of 
Sinn    Fein    to    give    the    brains    and    muscle    of 


258       HOME  LIFE  TN  TIIELAND 

the  country  scope  and  happiness  in  the  service 
of  Ireland. 

Sinn  bViin  thus  proposes  to  l)uihl  up  tlie  Irish 
nation  in  spite  of  tlie  British  Parliament  and  the 
repeated  refusal  by  the  latter  of  even  a  small 
instalment  of  self-government.  It  proposes  to 
organise  a  great  national  passive  resistance  move- 
ment to  oppose  the  British  Government  and  British 
influence  at  every  point  of  vantage  they  have 
gained  in  the  country,  fiscal,  educational,  industrial, 
legal,  literary,  dramatic,  artistic.  Ireland,  it  says, 
has  too  long  met  England  on  battlefields  which 
Eno'laiid  hci'scif  has  chosen  —  the  lh)or  of  the 
House  of  (Jomnioiis  and  the  Held  of  war.  liCt 
Ireland  now  choose  the  place  of  battle  and  let  it 
be  the  Irish  school,  the  Irish  factory,  the  Irish 
shop,  the  Irish  home,  the  Irish  farm,  the  Irish 
church,  the  Irish  theatre,  and  Sinn  Feineis  have 
no  doul>t  that  a  new  and  l)eautiful  individuaHty 
will  be  added  to  the  family  of  nations. 

I  have  given  this  prominence  to  an  account  of 
the  Sinn  Fein  policy,  not  because  it  has  yet 
captured  the  majority  even  of  Nationalist  Irish- 
men, but  because  I  think  it  is  the  school  of 
Nationalism  Avith  which  the  future  will  have  to 
reckon.  Sinn  Fein  stands  alone  in  Irisli  politics 
as  having  Ijoth  a  national  and  a  constructive  policy. 
It  aims  at  building  a  nation  to  include  all  the  races 
and  creeds  and  ranks  that  inhabit  Ireland.  It 
recognises  the  existence  of  only  one  race  in  Ireland 
— not  the  Celtic  or  the  Gaelic  or  the   Danish  or 


SINN  FEIN  259 

the  Norman  or  the  Saxon,  ))ut  the  Irish  race.  It 
desires  the  revival  of  the  national  language,  not 
because  it  is  the  language  of  the  Gael,  but  because 
it  is  the  traditional  language  of  the  Irish  j^eople. 
As  for  its  iuclusioii  of  all  creeds  and  chisses,  it 
(juarr(>Is  with  the  Nationalism  of  Daniel  O'Conuell 
because  at  a  critical  moment  it  raised  a  sectarian 
and  not  a  national  standard — the  emancipation  of 
the  Catholics,  not  the  emancipation  of  Ireland. 
•Similarly,  it  holds  that  Parnell,  influenced  by 
Davitt  and  other  leaders  of  the  late  seventies  and 
early  eiglitics,  committed  a  national  l)lunder  when 
he  allowed  a  war  for  the  rights  of  the  tenant- 
farmers  to  be  substituted  for  a  war  for  the  rights 
of  Ireland. 

Sinn  lA'in  holds  that  every  time  tlie  Irish  nation 
has  aHowcMl  ilself  to  be  se( bleed  from  the  direct 
line  of  national  jtobcy  into  social  and  sectarian 
side-issuoH,  it  lias  lost  hcn.vily,  and  it  ])oints  to  the 
facts  of  history  as  a  [)roof  that,  l)ecause  tlie  dominant 
national  issue  was  not  settled  first,  neitlier  the 
emancipation  of  the  Catholics  nor  the  many  laws 
in  relief  of  the  tenant-farmers  have  been  able  to 
prevent  Ireland  from  sinking  into  a  deeper  and 
more  general  poverty  every  year.  The  condition 
of  the  country  has  certainly  improved  in  some 
respects  during  the  last  thirty  years  or  so,  but  its 
condition  as  a  nation  has  changed  ever  so  much 
for  the  worse.  The  population  has  gone  down  by 
over  a  million.  More  than  a  million  acres  of  land 
have  gone  out  of  tillage.      Meanwhile,  the  taxation 


260       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

per  liead  of  an  impoverished  people  has  increased 
from  18s.  9d.  in  1871,  to  £2,  4s.  4d.  in  190G. 

Sinn  Fein  holds  that,  to  use  an  old  similitude, 
the  sun  of  national  independence  alone  can  scatter 
the  deep  darkness  that  has  been  gathering  for  so 
long  over  the  land,  and  it  appeals  to  the  gentry, 
to  the  industrial  and  manufacturing  classes,  to  the 
society  Catholic,  to  the  Protestant  Ulsterman,  to 
abandon  their  ancient  distrust  of  the  nation  and 
to  unite  with  the  rest  of  the  Nationalist  forces  in 
settino-  the  national  house  in  order — or  rather  in 
building  a  new  national  house  altogether.     It  is 
the  first  Nationalist  movement,   I   believe,  which 
appeals  directly  to  the  middle-classes  in  the  town 
centres,  for  its  leaders  realise  tJiatno  great  national 
revolution  was  ever  yet  accomplished  without  the 
aid  either  of  an   organised  upper-class  or  of  an 
organised    middle-class,    or    both.       It   has    been 
criticised,   on   the  other   hand,   for  not    ai)pealing 
with  a  sulliciently  winning  voice  to  the  artisans 
and  labourers,  but  that  it  has  not  yet  done  so  is 
partly  due  to  a  laudable  determination  to   keep 
national    solidarity    and    independence    the    sole 
planks  in  its  platform  and  not  to  allow  its  forces 
to  be  divided  on  a  class  issue.     Even  social  reform, 
it  contends,   cannot  be  radical  or  of  much  avail 
while  an  unsettled  and  unsettling  national  question 
troubles  the  air. 

Many  Irish  men  and  women  refrain  from 
being  Nationalists,  l)ecause,  they  say,  Ireland 
is    too  small  and  too  ]XJor  to  be  an  independent 


SINN  FEIN 


2G1 


nation.  Here  again,  the  Sinn  Fdiner  offers  his 
answer — in  the  form  of  a  statistical  table  this 
time.  In  this  table,  the  area,  population,  revenue 
and  taxation  of  seven  more  or  less  independent 
European  Nations  arc  com])ared  with  those  of 
Ireland.     The  list  reads  as  follows  : 


Countrj-. 

Desciiption. 

Area 

(square 
miles). 

Popula- 
tion. 

Revenue. 

Taxation 
per  head. 

Doimmik 

Wurtcrnbcrp; 

( !  rcoi'o 

Uonninnia 

Sweden 

NorWi-iy 

Switzerland 

Ireland 

Fndopcndont  Kingdom 
Siizor.'iiii  Kingdom 
(Jii.iniiitcod  Kingdom 
Independent  Kingfli)ni 
Independent  Kingdom 
Independent  Kingdom 
Inde})endent  Kepublic 

15.388 

7,534 

25,014 

50,720 

172,870 

124,12!) 

15,976 

32,531 

2,404,770 
2,1G!),486 
2,4:«,800 
5,93(5,f,!(0 
5,513,044 
2,240,032 
3,315,443 
4,391,543 

4,250,000 
4,500,000 
3, 000, 000 
9  250,000 
8,800,000 
5,500,000 
4,000,000 
9,753,500 

£     R.     1). 

1  13  0 
1  8  0 
1  3  0 
1  4  0 
1  13  G 
1   12    6 

1  7     0 

2  4     4 

Mr  (icorge  A,  l]iriniii<fhani,  tin;  Irish  novelist 
and  publicist,  has  declared  that  "  The  Sinn  F6iii 
Policy  " — the  pamphlet  from  which  I  have  taken 
the  above  figures — is  the  most  remarkable  state- 
ment of  political  thought  published  in  Ireland 
since  the  days  of  the  Revolutionists,  or  Rebels,  of 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Certainly,  Sinn 
F(^in  has  brought  intellect,  imagination  and  con- 
structive ideas  into  Irish  politics  to  a  degree  un- 
paralleled since  the  time  of  Davis,  Mitchel,  Lalor, 
and  the  Young  Irelanders.  The  present  century 
will  see  the  triumph  of  one  of  two  policies  in 
Ireland.  One  of  these  policies  is  Unionism,  the 
Unionism  of  Lord  Londonderry,  and  Mr  Walter 
Long,  and  Mr  C.  A.  Pearson.  The  other — the  more 
honourable  one — is  the  policy  of  Sinn  Fein. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

POLITICS   AND   (JATIIERINOS 

The  history  of  Irish  politics,  on  the  whole,  apart 
from  the  question  whether  they  have  always  heen 
directed  along  the  wisest  channels,  seems  to  me  to 
reflect  a  good  deal  of  credit  on  the  character  of  the 
Irish  people.  It  sliows  them  not  to  he  a  fickle 
people,  as  they  are  often  called,  l)ut  to  be  a  race 
determinedly  ])ent  upon  reaching  a  more  or  less 
definite  goal.  The  Nationalist  Irish  have  changed 
policies  frequently  enough,  but  they  never  yet 
would  liavc  much  to  do  with  a  policy  unless  it  came 
to  them  as  in  some  way  a  furtherer  of  national 
liberty.  Similarly,  the  Orange  Irish  would  never 
have  anything  to  do  with  a  policy  which  did  not 
present  itself  to  them  as  in  some  way  a  furtherer 
of  religious  liberty.  The  Orange  farmer  has  again 
and  ajrain  sacrificed  his  interests  as  a  farmer 
Ijefore  the  fair  figure  of  relioious  liberty,  or  some- 
thing  got  up  in  imitation  of  it.  "  I  wouldn't  let 
them  change  the  King's  oath  anyway,"  an  Orange- 
man of  this  class  said  to  me  some  years  ago,  when 
the  question  of  the  compulsory  sale  of  laud  was 
raging,  and  I  am  sure  he  would  rather  remain  for 
ever  in  bondage   to  the  landlords  he  hates   than 

202 


POIJTICS  AND  GATHERINGS    263 

see  agrariau  fuceJom  purchased  by  the  concessiou 
of  a  little  politeness  to  his  enemy  the  Pope, 
The  Nationalist  worker  in  the  towns  has  at  all 
times  been  equally  ready  to  sacrifice  his  own 
immediate  interests  to  his  ideal  or  dream. 

I  do  not  mean  that,  [)olitically  speaking,  the 
Irish  are  a  race  of  saints  or  martyrs.  1  mean 
simply  tliat  there  is  a  vein  of  political  idealism 
running  through  their  nature,  and  that  green 
banners  and  orange  banners  rather  than  any 
materiaHstic  ])assi()iis  ha,vc  given  to  Irish  pobtics 
such  dignity  of  spirit  and  continuity  as  it  possesses. 
The  leaders  on  both  sides  may  at  times  have  fallen 
short  of  the  best,  but  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
people  have,  I  think,  again  and  again  shown  their 
ca])a.city  for  daring  and  unselfisJi  courses.  Their 
daring  and  unsellishness,  it  may  be  added,  have 
been  hugely  wasted  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  first 
necessity  of  national  vitality,  the  national  language, 
was  until  lately  forgotten  in  their  battles. 

The  Irishman  is  born  with  an  interest  in  politics 
as  he  is  born  with  an  interest  in  relioion.  If  at 
the  present  moment  he  seems  to  be  apathetic  and 
bewildered,  it  is  because  he  has  reached  a  transition 
point,  and  is  reconsidering  the  formula)  which 
have  expressed  his  political  principles  for  so  long. 
Some  people  may  imagine  they  see  a  decadence  in 
Irish  politics.  And  a  decadence  there  is.  Agrarian 
[»olitics  arc  decaying,  and  Orange  ])olitics  are 
decaying.  8idc  by  side  with  the  decadence,  how- 
ever, a  renaissance  is  going  on.     A  new  element  of 


264       HOISIE  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

nationality  is  slowly  entering  into  both  Nationalist 
and  Orange  politics  and  transforming  them.  The 
decadence  is  in  reality  a  sign  of  growth. 

Many  of  the  older  people,  who  took  part  in  the 
agrarian  struggle  now  in  its  last  phases,  seem  to  be 
utterly  weary  of  politics.  The  failure  of  Parlia- 
mentary agitation  to  win  the  smallest  measure  of 
Home  Rule  has  left  them  witli  the  sensations  of 
people  who  have  been  badly  disillusionised.  To  talk 
to  them,  you  would  think  that  Nationalist  Ireland 
had  lost  both  its  self-confidence  and  its  self-con- 
sciousness. "  What  is  the  use  of  struggling  any 
more  ?  "  these  people  say  in  eflect.  "  We're  beaten, 
so  let  us  save  what  we  can  from  the  wreck.  Let 
J^iiglish  royalties  visit  us  and  bring  money  into  the 
country.  Let  regiments  of  soldiers  come  and  take 
up  their  quarters  in  our  towns,  so  that  we  can  at 
least  make  something  l)y  selling  them  food  and 
drink.  Let  the  (Joveriimeiit  help  us  with  our 
land,  help  us  with  iinlustries,  help  us  in  all  times 
and  in  all  [daces,  jjct  them  make  some  of  us 
J.P.'s,  and  give  our  sons  jobs,  and  we'll  be  content, 
or,  at  least,  we'll  learn  to  keep  quiet." 

This  is  the  voice,  I  may  say,  of  the  dying,  not 
of  the  living,  Ireland.  It  is  a  voice,  however, 
which  is  audible  in  so  many  parts  of  the  country 
that  some  people  may  be  misled  into  thinking  that 
Ireland  is  really  so  weak  and  demoralised  that  it  is 
ready  to  sell  everything  in  which  it  once  believed 
for  Government  doles.  The  decadence  of  agrarian 
politics  is  discernible  in  nothing  more  clearly  than 


POLITICS  AND  GATHERINGS    265 

in  the  trausformatioii  of  the  boycott  from  au 
iiiBtrument  of  uuselfishuess  to  au  instrument  of 
selfishness.  The  boycott,  as  a  national  means  to 
a  national  end,  is  of  course  as  tolerable  a  thing 
as  any  system  of  police  you  will  find  the  world 
over.  It  is  a  means  of  expressing  the  organised 
sense  of  justice  of  the  people  in  an  unfree  country, 
just  as  the  law  and  police  are  a  means  of  expressing 
the  organised  sense  of  justice  of  the  people  in  a 
free  country,  it  is  in  itself  no  more  shocking  to 
tlic  moral  Hcnse  to  see  an  evil-doer  punished  by  the 
honourable  sort  of  boycotters  than  it  is  to  see  him 
punished  by  a  judge,  jury  and  policemen.  It  is 
obvious,  however,  that  the  system  of  boycott,  like 
the  police  system,  is  capable  of  being  abused  and 
perverted  into  a  system  of  extreme  tyranny.  The 
personal  boycott  for  personal  ends  is  a  crime 
against  Nationalism  as  it  is  against  morals,  and 
where  it  exists,  it  is  the  result  of  the  entrance  of 
selfish  men  into  politics,  and  of  their  capture  of 
the  local  political  machine  for  their  own  purposes. 
If  the  police  were  under  popular  control  instead  of 
being  tlie  soldiers  of  a  foreign  conquest — "saigli- 
didri  dubha"  (black  soldiers)  is  the  Irish  name  for 
them  in  some  places — the  people  would  help  them 
in  putting  down  this  as  every  other  sort  of  crime. 
So  long  as  the  police  stand  for  the  perpetuation  of 
foreign  government,  however,  thousands  of  people 
would  regard  it  as  the  greatest  of  all  crimes  to  give 
them  any  aid,  no  matter  what  the  circumstances 
— even,  say,  if  it  were  a  question  of  the  conviction 


266       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  a  man  guilty  of  poisoning  fish  or  some  equally- 
unpleasant  deed. 

1  am  not  here  going  to  discuss  the  constitution 
of  the  United  Irish  League,  the  Irish  Unionist 
Alliance,  the  Devolutionists,  the  Imperial  Home 
Rule  Association,  the  Northern  Union,  the 
Socialists,  and  the  other  political  bodies  in  the 
country.  ^J'hat  would  involve  an  amount  of 
exposition  and  criticism  quite  ])eyond  the  scope  of 
this  book.  I  have  already  given  an  outline  of 
Sinn  Fdin,  the  newest  of  the  political  ideals,  which 
will  have  an  official  daily  paper  of  its  own  by  the 
time  the  present  volume  is  in  ])rint.  My  main 
point  in  this  chapter,  however,  is  to  stress  the  fact 
that,  in  spite  of  the  selfishness  which  sometimes 
characterises  agrarian  politics,  in  spite  of  the 
frequent  abuse  of  the  Ijoycott,  in  spite  of  the 
occasional  success  of  men  of  poor  principles  in 
gaining  control  of  the  local  machine,  the  mass  of 
t]ie  people  have  usually  taken  tlieir  ])olitics  with 
an  honourabhi  seri(jusness.  Education  has  l)een  at 
so  low  a  level  in  tlie  country  tliat  political  thought 
has  not  been  so  connnon  as  political  sincerity, 
with  the  result  that  the  people  have  often  mistaken 
party  machines  for  political  realities,  and  have 
stood  by  tliem  with  a  lirmness  worlliy,  as  the 
saying  is,  of  a  Ijetter  cause. 

This  loyalty  to  party  often  springs  out  of  a  fine 
desire  for  unity,  for  many  people  seem  to  think 
that  variety  of  political  ideals  is  permissil)le  in 
every  country  in  the  world   except  Ireland.     The 


POLITICS  AND  GATHERINGS    267 

younger  men  are  beginning  to  Bee  that  tlie  unity 
of  patriotism  is  one  thing,  and  the  unity  of  a 
party  machine  another. 

Ideas  are  becoming  more  and  more  insistent 
in  tlie  political  atmosplicro,  and  audiences  can  no 
longer  be  made  enlliusinstic-  by  a  windy  use  of 
green  and  orange  words  to  the  extent  which  used 
to  be  the  case.  Tlie  mob-orator  is  now  looked 
on  in  most  jilaces  as  a  comic  character,  and  the 
very  vocabulary  of  ])\d)lic  speech  is  ch;inging. 
Tiic  old  sort  of  orators  are  still  occasionally  loosed 
on  the  land,  of  course,  but  their  exaggerated 
words  now  fall  fiat  where  they  used  to  be  applauded 
as  though  they  had  a  meaning.  The  practical, 
critical  speaker  is  listened  to  in  a  tenser  silence 
than  any  of  them,  and  no  man  in  Dublin  gets 
so  attentive  a  hcarini;-  as  Mr  Arthur  Grillith,  when 
he  is  expounding  in  a  quiet,  unemotional  voice 
some  subject  like  the  financial  bearings  of  the 
connection  with  England. 

Public  meetings  and  processions  seem  to  be 
rapidly  losing  ground  in  Ireland  as  a  method  of 
expressing  political  enthusiasm.  I  think  this 
is  only  a  temporary  change.  It  is  a  reaction 
against  a  kind  of  politics  which  depended  too 
much  on  the  demonstrative  enthusiasm  of  the 
crowd,  and  too  little  on  the  silent  enthusiasm  of 
the  individual.  1  confess  I  like  the  meetings  and 
processions  :  the  people,  1  believe,  have  a  natural 
genius  for  them.  I  like  the  green  and  gold  and 
orange  and   purple  of  the  huge  banners  as  they 


268       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

come  floating  up  the  road  in  the  wind,  with  the 
drums  beating  and  the  bauds  crashing  out  warlike 
music.  Sometimes  the  portraits  of  O'Connell,  of 
Emmet,  of  Lord  Edward  Fitzgerakl,  of  William  of 
Orange,  of  Martin  Luther,  are  less  than  beautiful 
in  detail,  but  they  have  a  splendid  insolence  of 
colour  that  mixes  well  with  the  movement  and 
enthusiasm  of  huge  crowds. 

The  most  enthusiastic  gatherings  nowadays 
have  nothing  to  do  with  politics,  but  are  the 
feiseanna,  or  festivals,  organised  in  country  places 
in  connection  with  tlie  laiiguaoe  revival.  Tlitlier 
come  tlie  troops  of  the  jtolilicians  Ixiliind  their 
bannei's  and  their  l)and,s,  but  hither,  too,  come 
the  scliohirs,  the  singers,  tlie  dancers,  the  whistlers, 
the  story-tellers,  the  fiddlers,  the  young  men  and 
maidens,  the  well-dressed  children,  with  new 
banners  in  an  old  tongue  rising  from  among  them. 
The  Gaelic  League  crowd,  one  feels,  is  a  crowd 
which  never  took  much  public  pait  in  allairs 
before.  It  is  a  crowd,  not  enamoured  of  surface 
catchwords,  l)ut  with  the  secrets  of  vitality  in  its 
quick,  pleasant  eyes.  In  no  crowd  in  L'eland  is 
there  so  much  equal  talk  and  laughter  between 
the  sexes,  hi  no  crowd  in  Ireland  is  there  the 
same  almost  merry  devotion  to  the  real  unity  of 
nationhood — the  unity  at  which  Wolfe  Tone 
aimed  when  he  desired  that  Irishmen  should  no 
longer  be  known  merely  as  Protestants,  Catholics 
and  Dissenters,  but  that  these  dividing  names 
should  all  give  way  in  national  alfairs  to  the  more 


POLITICS  AND  GATHERINGS    2G9 

generous  denomination  of  Irislimau.  There  arc 
narrow  peoi)le,  foolish  people,  to  be  found  at 
CTaelic  gatherings  as  at  all  other  public  gatherings 
in  the  Christian  world.  But  the  Gaelic  League 
itself  is  neither  narrow  nor  foolish.  It  contains 
within  its  ranks  landlords  and  fanners,  Catholic 
ju'iests  and  Trotcstant  ministers,  employers  and 
labourers,  Christians  and  agnostics,  and  is  now  so 
firmly  rooted  in  the  imagination  and  conscience 
of  the  people  that  the  movement  for  which  it 
stands  cannot  in  the  ordinary  course  of  events  fail 
in  the  achievement  of  its  object — which  is  to 
make  Ireland  a  living  country  and  to  give  it  a 
personality  among  the  nations. 

No  less  characteristically  Irish  than  the  political 
gatherings  and  the  feiseanna  are  the  lively,  jostling, 
slioutiiii''  tliioi)o;s  that  one  sees  at  fairs  and  reirattas. 
and  at  important  hurling  and  fooll)M.II  matches. 
Hero  on  great  days  you  will  sec  a  littk',  village 
of  l)ooths  grow  up  on  the  roads  or  in  the  fields, 
and  men  with  roulette  tables,  men  with  the 
three-card  trick,  men  with  trick-in-the-loop, 
men  with  sticks  and  rings,  men  witli  checkered 
cloths  on  which  many  abortive  pennies  are  thrown, 
men  with  white  mice  for  telling  fortunes,  tumblers, 
cord-escapers,  ballad-singers,  and  fiddlers  with 
their  tunes  come  together  as  if  from  the  four 
corners  of  the  world.  A  blind  beggar,  his  white 
head  bare  in  the  sunny  breeze,  will  plant  himself 
in  the  fair-way  of  the  thronging  traffic,  crying 
with  a  noble  persuasiveness  :  "  A  penny  for  a  poor 


270       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

blind  man,  for  the  love  of  God  !  A  penny  for  the 
love  of  ( Jod  I  God  knows  you  won't  miss  it ! 
God  knows  you  won't  miss  it !  It  isn't  much 
I'm  asking.  It  isn't  much  I'm  asking.  A  penny 
for  a  poor  blind  man,  for  the  love  of  God  !  A 
penny  for  the  love  of  God  !  " 

Surrounded  by  a  crushing  circle  of  people,  a  man 
and  woman  will  be  standing,  tough-looking  cus- 
tomers, yelling  ballads  into  each  other's  faces. 
Sometimes  it  is  the  rule  for  them  to  hold  their  green 
or  wiiite  ballad-sheets  in  front  of  tliem  as  they  sing, 
but  you  need  not  be  surprised  if  the  balhid-slieet  in 
their  hands  is  upside-down,  or  if  it  contains  quite 
a,  dilTeriHit  l):dla<l  from  the  oui;  they  ai-e  singiug. 
They  sing  a  du(;t  in  uuison — a  duet  without  a 
pause  from  start  to  finish,  for  the  man  will  proljably 
let  the  woman  sing  the  last  half-line  of  the  verse 
by  herself  in  order  that  he  may  fill  his  lungs  so  as 
to  be  able  to  bellow  out  the  beginning  of  a  new 
verse  from  his  twisted  face  before  the  last  note  of 
the  old  has  died  a  painful  death  on  the  woman's 
lips.  It  is  dillicult  to  convey  the  exact  iuipressiou 
of  this  racing  kind  of  singing.  The  Irish  tramp- 
sino-er  is  heir  to  the  old  tunes,  Ijut  lie  is  heir,  I 
imao-ine,  only  to  the  battered  relics  of  the  old 
methods  of  singing.  lie  moans,  he  skirls,  he  yells  ; 
he  would  wake  the  dead  with  his  u}»roar.  Some- 
times he  will  give  you  the  ancient  ballad  of 
"  Robert  Emmet " — "  Poor  Rol)ert  Emmet,  the 
darlino"  of  Ireland."  Sometimes,  if  there  are  no 
police  near,  you  may  even   get  him  to  sing  you 


POLITICS  AND  GATHERINGS    271 

"The  Peeler  and  the  Goat" — a  soug  putting 
ridicule  upon  the  police  to  the  merriest  tune.  Or, 
perhaps,  he  will  let  you  have  a  new  and  topical 
l)allad  of  his  own.  Here,  for  example,  is  the 
bco;innin<jj  of  a  ballad  on  the  takino:  of  the  census, 
suiiii;  ill  the  strec^ts  of  Dublin  before  ballad-sinoiuix 
had  become  a  declining  trade  : 

"  Oh,  they're  taking  of  the  census 
In  the  country  and  the  town  ! 
Have  your  children  got  the  maisles  ? 
Are  your  chinil)lcys  tuml)]ini^  down?" 

Lady  (Iregory  quotes  a  Ijallad  of  a  dillerent  sort, 
made  during  tlie  South  African  war  in  lionour  of 
the  Irishmen  who  fought  on  the  side  of  the  Boers. 
One  beautiful  verse  runs  : 

"Oil,  mother  of  tlic  Avonnded  breast! 
Oil,  juothor  of  tliG  tears  ! 
'I'lio  sons  yon  Iovc(l  and  trusted  best 
Have,  gias[tc(l  their  liattic  Rpears." 

Pecently  the  air  has  been  noisy  witli  ballads 
about  the  old  age  pensions  and  their  good  and  dire 
results.  1  came  upon  no  less  than  three  of  these 
in  a  single  week.  Of  tlie  best  of  them,  unfortun- 
ately, 1  did  not  get  a  copy,  but  1  think  one  of  the 
others  may  be  worth  quoting  because  of  its  char- 
acteristic qualities — a  few  verses  of  it,  at  least,  for 
it  is  too  long  to  give  in  full.  After  three  intro- 
ductory verses,  it  runs  on  like  this : 

"  Some  ])eople  used  deny  their  age — 
You  often  could  them  hear — 
They  would  nearly  strike  you  Avith  their  stick 
If  you  said  they  were  seventy  year. 


272       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

Now  they  arc  nuininf^  to  the  [)aiish  books, 
They  do  not  cure  aljout  wind  or  cohi, 

And  they  tell  the  priest  now  if  he  can, 
To  try  and  make  tlicm  old. 

"  I  met  an  old  man  the  other  day, 

Who  was  both  old  and  weak. 
He  says  '  I'll  try  and  calculate 

How  to  spend  five  bob  a  week. 
There  is  one  and  nincpence  for  my  lodging. 

For  to  lay  my  poor  head  down, 
And  ninepence  for  tobacco, 

That  is  the  first  half-crown. 

"  'Then  there  is  sevenpence  for  sugar, 

And  sevenpence  for  tay  : 
Tenpencedia 'penny  woiLli  of  bread, 

That's  three-halfpence  every  day. 
Thret!i)ence  haUpcnny  I'or  new  milk — 

Uiir  feeding  won't  be  great : 
And  I'll  have  twopence  for  Sunday  for 

To  buy  a  piece  of  mate. 

"  '  But  I  think  I'll  get  married  to 

Some  old  woman  in  the  town. 
For  I  am  told  by  young  and  old 

She'll  have  a  half-a-crown. 
Then  we'll  take  a  cabin  of  our  own, 

Where  I  can  rest  my  bones, — 
Unless  that  she'd  go  on  the  spree 

And  hammer  me  with  stones.' " 

This  song  incidentally  gives  some  idea  of  a  poor 
man's  budo;et.  It  also  contains  in  the  last  two 
lines  a  suggestion  of  tlie  grim  sort  of  humour  in 
which  Irish  l)allad-singers,  whether  in  English  or 
in  Irish,  seem  every  now  and  then  to  indulge  in  the 


rOLlTICS  AND  CATITElllNGS    273 

intervals  of  idealism.  In  the  closing  verse  we  have 
a  sardonic  and  ludicrous  picture  of  old  men  and 
women  militant — a  picture  of  a  kind  which  is  more 
typical  perhaps  of  the  humour  of  tramps  than  of  the 
humour  of  settled  people.     The  poet  observes : — 

"  Wh.ib  a  splendid  regiment  they  would  be, 

If  it  happened  they  would  be  called  in, 
With  their  hand-sticks  and  their  crutches. 

The  old  women  and  old  men, 
They  avouM  l)cat  the  stones  and  ditches, 

And  pretend  they  were  not  so  weak, 
And  tlicy  would  (iglit  with  all  their  might 

For  tliis  five  bob  a  week." 

The  singing  and  selling  of  ballads  like  this  is  a 
great  business  in  country  towns  where  sports  of 
any  kind  arc  being  held.  Often  the  singers, 
instead  of  making  a  collection  for  themselves,  sell 
their  ballads  to  the  onlookers  after  each  song— a 
transiiction  which  gives  country  po()[)le  a  ])le.'i,Ranfc 
feeling  that  they  are  getting  something  for  their 
money.  Nothing  could  be  more  amusing  than  the 
rapidity  with  which  the  song  is  brought  to  an  end 
as  the  time  for  selliuor  draws  near.  The  traditional 
Irish  way  of  ballad-singing  has  no  top-notes  or 
lingering  graces  at  the  close  of  the  song.  The 
last  few  words,  indeed,  are  not  sung  at  all,  but 
the  voice  suddenly  drops  from  impassioned  music 
to  the  ordinary  tones  of  conversation,  and  the 
ballad  ends  like  a  hurried  comment  on  the  weather, 
as  the  siuger  moves  off  to  collect  his  reward. 

I  have  pcrliaps  given  a  disproportionate  amount 
s 


274       HOJNIE  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

of  space  to  tlic  l)allad-singer,  Ijiit  to  me  lie  is 
always  the  centre  of  the  lair  or  the  festival  which 
he  atteiuls,  Ife  seeins  to  link  them  to  the  i'airs 
and  festivals  of  other  centuries  :  lie  is  the  past  in 
rags.  A  new  style  of  singer  has  unfortunately 
begun  to  go  about  the  country  with  words  and 
airs  from  the  music-halls.  The  music-hall  words 
may  be  as  wise  as  the  ballad-singer's,  l)Ut  they 
are  not  related  to  Irish  earth  in  the  same  way. 
Besides,  there  is  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
between  the  new  tunes  and  the  old.  There  is  as 
much  difference  between  them  as  between  giggling 
and  natural  laughter,  as  lietween  maudlin  senti- 
mentaliyni  and  the  passion  of  dcs[)air.  An  Irisli 
iirowd  at  once  loses  half  its  meaning — for  it  loses 
all  its  significance  to  the  memory — when  the 
banjos  troop  in,  and  the  home-coming  of  Bill 
Bailey  and  the  history  of  the  man  who  was  afraid 
to  go  home  in  the  dark,  take  the  place  of  tlie 
ancient  interests. 

I  remember,  one  twelfth  of  Jul}',  if  1  may  be 
allowed  to  shift  the  subject  a  little,  hearing  a  band 
in  a  great  Orange  procession  playing  "  AVhat  oh, 
she  Ijumps  ! "  It  killed  the  spirit  of  the  })rocession 
for  me,  as  it  would  kill  the  spirit  of  a  church  if 
tlie  organist  suddenly  struck  up  with  a  tune  of 
this  sort  as  a  voluntary.  For  Orangeism,  like  the 
fairs,  owes  much  of  what  beauty  it  possesses  to  the 
traditional  tunes;  and  "The  Boyne  Water,"  "The 
Orange  Lily,"  and  "The  Protestant  Boys"  are 
among  the  most  joyous  and  exhilarating  airs  1  know. 


CITAPTER   XVII 

MANNERS 

Irish  manners  appear  at  their  best,  I  think,  in 
connection  with  hospitality.  The  tradition  of 
hospitality  is  an  old  one  in  Irehiud,  and  according 
to  the  Brelion  law,  people  in  the  higher  stations 
were  bound  to  entertain  guests  "without  asking  any 
questions."  There  were  besides  some  four  hundred 
guest-houses  scattered  throughout  the  country  in 
the  early  days  of  Christianity,  and  the  master 
of  cad)  of  these  was  ,sii|)[)OHed  to  keep  his  kitchen- 
fire  co?istantly  burning  and  j(jiuts  boiling  in  liis 
cauldron  in  readiness  for  the  arrival  of  strangers. 
This  ma}'^  seem  to  have  very  little  to  do  with  the 
home  life  of  ordinary  Irish  men  and  women  of 
the  present  time,  l^ut  it  must  be  remembered  that 
the  ordinary  Irish  men  and  women  of  the  present 
time  are  the  representatives  of  an  okl  aristocracy 
fallen  upon  evil  times.  Many  foreign  elements, 
many  elements  of  a  ruder  sort,  have  entered  into 
the  composition  of  the  nation  in  the  last  several 
hundred  years.  But  there  still  survives  an  ancient 
aristocratic  leaven  among  the  people — an  aristo- 
cratic leaven  of  hospitality  and  good  manners. 
It  is  a  question  whether  the  Irish  landloid  or 


276       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

the  Irish  peasant  is  tlie  more  distinguished  for  his 
hospitality.      The   peasant    has    often    not   much 
to  give  you,  but  in  unspoiled  places  he  will  likely 
give  you  all   he  has.       It  is  well  in   some  parts 
of  the  country  not  to   take   a  full  meal  in    the 
houses  of  the  poor  if  you  are  a  passing  stranger, 
for  they  will  accept  no  money  for  what  they  give 
you,  and  you  will  go  away  with  a  conscience  that 
tortures  you  for  having  robbed  the  needy.     Even 
in  those  places  where  the  spirit  of  hospitality  has 
been    to   some   degree   commercialised,    you    will 
come  upon  unexpected   hospitable    turns    in    the 
behaviour  of  the  people.     Thus,  as  I  was  walking 
with  a  iViend  along  a  lonely  road  in  the  west  one 
j)arching   day,    we    called    in    at  a   public-house, 
which    looked  something    like  an  ordinary  farm- 
house,   and    tried    to    get    some   lemonade.       The 
house   was    out  of  temperance  liquors,  however, 
and,   as   we    refused    to   take    claret,  the    girl    in 
charire    of  it   offered   us    some    milk.        We    took 
good  drinks  of  this,  and   then   asked   liow  much 
we  had  to  pay  for  it.     But  the  girl  said  "  There's 
no  charge,"  and  would  take  nothing,  though  the 
house  was  a  licensed  public-house  and  the  sales  of 
drinks  must  have  been  small. 

This  is  typical  of  the  desire  to  be  hospitable 
that  one  finds  nearly  everywhere.  Ireland  is,  as 
a  result  of  this,  an  awkward  country  in  which 
to  travel.  It  is  extremely  difficult  to  know  when 
you  will  be  insulting  people  by  offering  money, 
and    when    you    will    l)e  insulting   them  by   not 


INIANNEUS  277 

offering  it.  Tlie  very  man  who  brings  you  your 
drink  in  ca  public-house,  even  in  Dublin  or  Belfast, 
may  take  a  drink  with  you,  but  he  will  not  take 
money  from  you.  The  waitresses  in  the  resturants, 
except  in  the  more  fashionable  and  cosmopolitan 
Dublin  tea-shops,  look  for  no  tips.  Obligingness, 
indeed,  without  money  and  without  price,  is  a 
national  virtue.  On  the  other  hand,  let  an  Irish- 
man once  get  accustomed  to  accepting  money 
for  small  services,  and  he  will  run  to  the  opposite 
extreme  from  hospitality  in  his  greediness.  The 
pennies  and  twopences  witli  which  so  many  people 
tip  their  way  througli  London  would  be  despised 
in  Ireland.  You  could  not  overwhelm  the  tip- 
taking  sort  of  Irishman,  no  matter  how  large  your 
dole.  The  tourist-corrupted  districts,  it  may  be 
said,  arc  very  often  extremely  poor  pl.-iccs,  and 
visitors  arc  looked  on  as  l)eing  a  sort  of  millionaires 
to  whom  giving  out  money  is  as  easy  as  breathincr. 
Personally,  I  am  not  sorry  that  the  weather  and 
the  money-demands  between  tliem  should  scare 
away  a  good  many  tourists  from  Ireland.  Ireland 
is  a  good  country  for  genuine  travellers,  but  the 
tripper  will  be  far  merrier  and  more  comfortable 
out  of  it.     And  I  hope  it  will  always  remain  so. 

When  I  call  the  Irish  a  hospitable  people, 
moreover,  I  do  not  mean  that  they  are  open- 
lipped  and  open-hearted  for  every  stranger.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  outside  the  tourist  districts, 
they  arc  likely  to  be  shy  and  reticent  unless  they 
know   who   you    arc.       Thackeray    made   this   a 


278       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

cause  of  complaint  against  tlieni.  "  In  the  various 
cabins  I  have  entered,"  he  decLared,  writing;  of 
his  journey  from  Clifden  to  Westport,  "  I  liave 
found  talking  a  vain  matter ;  the  people  are 
suspicious  of  the  stranger  within  their  wretched 
gates,  and  are  shy,  sly,  and  silent.  I  have  com- 
monly only  been  able  to  get  half-answers  in  reply 
to  my  questions,  given  in  a  manner  that  seemed 
plainly  to  intimate  that  the  visit  was  unwelcome." 
Yet  the  district  of  which  Thackeray  is  here 
writing  is  one  of  the  most  hospitable  in  Ireland. 

In  some  places,  any  one  who  meets  you  on  the 
road  will  have  a  greeting  for  you.  Elsewhere, 
they  will  stare  at  you  without  ex[)ression,  or  look 
in  front  of  them  as  though  your  presence  were 
a  matter  of  no  importance  to  them. 

The  road-greetings  in  Ireland  vary  from  place 
to  place.  In  the  Irish-speaking  districts  of 
Connacht  and  elsewhcie  the  usual  greeting  is 
"  Go  mbeannuighidh  Dia  dhuit"  (God  bless  you  ), 
and  the  answer,  "Dia  's  JMuirc;  dliuit  "  (God  and 
Mary  bless  you).  In  some  parts  of  iMunsier  they 
say,  "  Bail  6  Dhia  ort "  (A  blessing  from  God 
on  you),  and  in  Donegal  they  say  simply,  "  Lit 
bredgh  "  (Fine  day),  or  if  it  is  after  twelve  o'clock 
in  the  day,  "'i'rathnoiia  maith"(G()od  evening); 
for  through  a  great  part  of  Ireland,  evening 
technically  begins  after  midday.  "  Good-night," 
too,  is  used  almost  as  freely  upon  meeting  people 
as  upon  parting  from  them.  In  the  English- 
speaking   districts,   the  traditional    southerner   is 


JMANNEllS  279 

supposed  to  say  "That's  a  fine  day,"  and  to  be 
answered,  "It  is,  glory  be  to  God,"  while  the 
northerner,  pusliing  past  in  the  rain  with  his 
coat-collar  about  liis  ears,  grunts  out  "Saft!" 
and  is  answered  "  Ay  !  "  It  is  not  always  raining 
in  the  nortli,  however,  nor  is  the  northeruer  always 
so  pessimistic  and  monosyllabic  as  tradition  makes 
him  out.  A  common  greeting  with  him  is, 
"  JMorrow,  boy,"  if  lie  meets  a  man  or  a  boy, 
and  the  answer  is  "  Morrow." 

'i'lic  IriHliiiiati  lias  a  great  rc[)uta.tion  for  poblc- 
ness,  and  1  Ihiidv  this  is  deserved.  In  the  laud- 
owning  and  |)rofeRsional  classes,  tlicre  is  a  fine 
spirit  of  chivalry  tow^ards  women,  and  in  the  towns 
you  will  see  proportionately  fewer  women  standing 
in  the  trams  and  trains  than  in  English  cities. 
The  Belfast  trams  have,  or  used  to  have,  a  rather 
startling  notice  painted  up  on  them:  "The  life- 
boat rule  is,  women  and  children  first." 

Politeness  in  the  country  places  is  very  different 
from  town  politeness.  The  poorer  people  are  not 
nearly  so  much  given  to  raising  their  caps  as  is 
often  stated.  In  many  parts,  the  ordinary  man 
does  not  think  of  taking  off  his  cap  to  anybody 
of  the  other  sex,  and  in  the  kitchens  and  even 
parlours  of  farm-houses,  you  will  often  see  the 
men  sitting  with  their  hats  or  caps  on  their  heads, 
no  matter  who  is  present.  This,  of  course,  is  onl}' 
a  convention,  and  politeness  expresses  itself  in 
various  ways  in  various  places.  Even  where  the 
conventions  permit  a  man  to  go  through  a  door 


280       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

in  front  of  a  woman,  and  where  they  have  not 
tauoht  him   the  different  uses  of  the  knife  and 

o 

fork,  or  the  side  of  a  phite  at  which  a  tea-cup 
should  stand,  you  will  find  the  essentials  of  polite- 
ness among  the  people — kindliness,  ease,  and  the 
spirit  of  equality. 

There  is  very  little  boot-licking  in  Ireland, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  very  little  l)row-1)eating 
pretentiousness  on  the  other.  There  are  diflereut 
classes  among  the  people,  but  not  different  castes, 
as  it  always  seems  to  me  there  are  in  England. 
Master  and  servant  can  talk  togetlier  with  some- 
thing like  ease  and  intimacy,  and  there  is  no  deep 
iSuU  dividin*^  the  children  of  the  i-ich  from  the 
children  of  the  poor,  save  in  a  few  narrow  cliques 
in  the  towns. 

Perhaps  a  chapter  on  Irish  manners  ought  to 
contain  some  reference  to  the  "  stage  Irishman  " 
— the  boisterous  buffoon,  who  is  to  l)e  met  with 
in  the  music-halls,  and  occasionally  in  real  life 
where  it  has  been  inlluenced  by  tiie  nmsic-lialls. 
The  "stage  Irishman,"  it  may  be  said  at  once, 
does  not  exist  at  all  in  Irish  country  places.  The 
country  people  sometimes  accept  him  with  amuse- 
ment on  the  concert  stage,  but  even  here  they 
have  lately  taken  to  hissing  liim  as  an  offence 
and  a  bore. 

He  was  in  origin  a  travesty  of  an  Anglicised 
sort  of  Irishman,  who  was  as  absurd  a  sight  for 
the  gods  as  an  Anglicised  Egyptian,  and  whose 
manners  were   no  more  like   real  Irish    manners 


MANNERS  281 

than  the  pigeon  English  which  is  to  be  heard  in 
China  is  like  the  real  English  language.  His 
shouts,  his  clownishness,  his  clothes,  his  jokes, 
have  no  more  resemblance  to  their  Irish  counter- 
parts than  the  Frenchman  of  a  London  musical 
comedy  has  to  a  Frenchman  of  Paris.  Even  the 
bulls  he  makes  arc  only  a  caricature  of  the  real 
Irish  bull — that  turn  of  speech  which,  as  the 
Somerville-Ross  collaboration  has  insisted,  is  by 
no  means  an  idiocy,  but  is  often  a  paradoxical  and 
impressionistic  mctliod  of  conveying  an  idea  in 
itself  beyond  the  reach  of  ordinary  statement. 
The  impressionistic  sort  of  bull  is,  I  think,  a 
peculiarly  Irish  or  Anglo-Irish  form  of  wit.  The 
idiotic  sort  of  bull  is  quite  another  thing,  and, 
like  malapropisms,  is  common  in  all  countries 
among  uneducated  people  who  use  words  rashly. 

The  "stage  Irishman"  gives  us  a  caricature 
of  one  undoubtedly  Irish  quality  —  what  we 
might  call  the  fighting  quality.  Irishmen  are 
certainly  pugnacious,  as  a  race.  They  take  a  real 
joy  in  the  battle.  The  faction  fights  which  used 
to  make  the  fairs  lively  were  a  national  institu- 
tion. One  of  tlie  new  Irish  writers  somewhere 
defends  these  fights  as  the  comparatively  modern 
remnants  of  the  old  heroic  battles.  They  were 
a  strenuous  sort  of  sport,  and  it  is  a  good  thing 
that  they  have  disappeared,  but  I  do  not  think 
they  were  as  brutal  as  the  old-fashioned  sort  of 
l)0xiug,  and  probably  they  were  not  always  more 
dangerous  than  American  football.     I  have  often 


282       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

seen  a  small  boy  in  Belfast,  when  another  eyed 
him  as  he  passed,  stopping  and  saying  :  "  Who 
are  you  looking  at?"  and  the  other  answering: 
"Do  you  want  to  pick  a  fight?"  and  I  think 
these  casual  challenges  spring  from  some  instincts 
of  a  fighting  ancestry.  Riots  and  faction-fights 
equally  are  symptoms  of  a  virile  fighting  spirit 
running  to  waste. 

Again,  if  you  compare  an  Irishman  and  an 
Englishman  when  under  the  influence  of  liquor, 
you  will  notice  that  in  a  great  nmnher  of  cases  the 
Irishman  becomes  dramatic  and  pugnacious  and 
wants  to  sliow  oil',  while  the  Englishman  is  anxious 
to  get  away  to  some  (juiet  place  where  no  one  will 
be  witness  of  his  shame.  As  a  consequence,  when 
an  Irishman  is  drunk,  everybody  knows  it :  when 
an  Englishman  is  drunk,  as  few  people  as  possible 
are  allowed  to  know  it.  This,  of  course,  is  only 
a  generalisation  with  a  thousand  exceptions.  It 
may  seem  a  trivial  generalisation,  ])ut  it  is  not 
without  significance.  The  fact  that  a  number  of 
Irishmen  in  their  cups  are  so  much  more  vividly 
drunk  than  a  similar  number  of  Euolishmen  in  a 
similar  condition  has  impressed  the  imagination  of 
the  world,  and  led  })eople  to  conclude  that,  com- 
paratively spuakiiig,  the  Irish  arc  a  drunken  race, 
whereas,  comparatively  speaking,  they  are  a  sober 
race,  drinking  less,  I  believe,  than  either  the  Scotch 
or  the  English. 

Obliging  and  at  the  same  time  individualistic  to 
an  almost  quarrelsome  point,  generously  hospitable 


MANNERS  283 

and  at  the  same  time  thrifty,  quick  in  tlieir  emotions 
and  yet  not  fickle  in  regard  to  the  things  they  care 
about,  at  once  reverent  and  ruthlessly  satirical, 
hard-working  and  hard-idling,  the  Irish  people 
have  a  thousand  [)ara,doxes  in  tlicir  character. 
There  are  few  things  you  can  truthfully  say  al)out 
them  which  you  cannot  as  truthfully  contradict. 
They  are  a  people  of  extraordinary  nervous  force, 
which  makes  their  merriment  seem  merrier  than  that 
ofotlioi-  jx'oplos  and  their  deH[)air  more  dcsj)erat(;, 
their  goodness  more  saintly  and  tlieir  corruption 
more  corrupt.  This  nervous  energy  has  fortunately 
not  yet  been  perverted  by  industrialism  or  by 
religious  and  political  indifferentism.  Unless  the 
people  follow  a  detcrmiudedly  Irish  way,  however, 
they  will  most  surely  end  in  drifting  away  both 
from  their  morals  and  their  manners. 

Perhaps  I  cannot  put  a  better  end  to  this 
chapter  than  by  quoting  a  letter  written  to  me 
from  Dublin  by  a  lady  a  few  months  ago — a  letter 
dwelling  upon  the  obligingness  of  the  people, 
which  I  have  already  mentioned  as  the  central 
virtue  of  their  manners.  She  was  walking  out 
past  Dalkey  one  day,  she  wrote,  when  she  put  her 
foot  through  the  braid  of  her  skirt  and  had  to  cut 
it  with  scissors.  "  It  still  kept  ripping,"  she  went 
on,  "and  we  stopped  to  search  for  pins  when  a  little 
scrubby  tramp  jiassed  us.  He  promptly  produced 
a  needle  with  a  bit  of  grey  thread  in  it  and  ollered 
it  to  me,  and  went  on  his  way.  I  was  very  grate- 
ful and  sewed  on  the  braid.     The  little  tramp  was 


284       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

trudging  on  ahead  so  we  gave  chase.  When  we 
overtook  him,  he  wanted  me  to  keep  the  needle,  so 
I  had  to  exphiin  I'd  used  it  and  presented  it  to 
him  again.  Wasn't  it  nice  of  him  ?  I'm  sure 
Ireland  is  the  only  country  where  a  tramp  would 
part  with  the  only  useful  thing  he  had  to  a  perfect 
stranger  passing  on  the  road.''  I  am  not  dogmati- 
cally sure  of  tiiis.  But  tlio  atmosphere  of  kindness 
for  which  the  tramp  stood  is  an  atmosphere  to 
which  I  myself  owe  so  many  pleasant  nights  and 
days  that  I  can  hardly  think  any  praise  an 
exaggeration. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

CHARACTERS.       I. — THE    DRIVER 

We  did  not  really  want  a  car.  I  had  gone  with  a 
friend  to  a  small  town  in  the  west  where  a  fair  was 
being  held,  and  we  had  no  wish  to  be  borne  off  to 
look  at  scenery,  but  only  asked  to  be  let  alone  to 
walk  up  and  down  and  hear  ballads  and  watch 
fine-looking  aged  people  bargaining  about  the 
price  of  pigs  and  calves  in   Irish. 

We  did  not,  I  repeat,  want  a  car.  We  had 
stepped  from  the  train,  however,  on  to  the  little 
wind-swept  platform,  and,  as  we  were  the  only 
urban-looking  people  among  the  arrivals,  the 
carmen  took  the  matter  determinedly  out  of  our 
hands.  We  had  the  force  of  character  to  refuse 
the  first  of  them — a  sly,  sullen,  suspicious  old  man 
in  a  cloth  cap,  who  tried  to  sell  us  what  appeared 
to  be  bits  of  stones.  Then  a  fellow  with  the 
length  and  the  low  brows  of  a  guardsman  shot 
across  the  platform  to  us.  I  think  we  must  have 
lost  our  heads.  Anyhow,  we  found  ourselves, 
against  all  our  better  inclinations,  sitting  on  the 
narrow  edge  of  his  car,  and  he  told  us  he  was  going 
to  take  us  to  see  "  the  clift,"  which,  he  declared, 
"  towerists "   from  all  parts  of   the    world    swore 

285 


286       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

was  the  graudest  piece  of  scenery  to  be  found  any- 
where. 

Luckily,  he  was  a  good-natured  fellow,  with  his 
lanky  limbs,  his  flowing  moustaches,  and  his 
soldier's  brow,  and  he  permitted  us  to  get  off  at  a 
way-side  hotel — or  public-house,  or  hardware  shop, 
or  l)akery,  whichever  you  like  to  call  it — for  a  half- 
hour's  lunch. 

When  we  came  out  again,  he  was  moving  agilely 
about  among  the  crowd  of  buyers  and  sellers,  his 
whip  towering  symbolically  and  inescapably  as  a 
slave-driver's,  flaving  helped  us  to  our  seats 
and  pressed  a  number  of  rugs  in  about  us,  he  lay 
up  against  his  side  of  the  car  and  l)atterud  the 
pony  into  a  broken  trot  along  a  lane  of  booths  and 
rebellious  animals. 

He  was  soon  talking  volubly  in  a  language  that 
was  neitlier  EngliHli  nor  hish,  but  was  a  kind  of 
mixture,  1  think,  that  he  had  invented  for  himself. 
He  was  especially  interested  in  "  towerists,"  and 
would  have  talked  of  nothing  else  if  I  had  let  him. 

"  There  was  an  English  gentleman  telling  me  a 
while  back,"  he  said,  leaning  insinuatingly  over 
the  car,  as  the  talk  drifted  into  semi-political 
things,  "that  the  Gover'ment  means  soon  to  show 
creat  favour  to  Ireland." 

"  That's  an  old  story,  isn't  it  ?  "  1  said. 

"Well,"  he  declared  confidently,  "they  tell  me 
it's  all  coming  true  at  last." 

Having  evidently  observed  some  turn  or  feature 
of  loyalty  in  my  countenance,  he  went  on  to  draw  me 


CHARACTERS.     I.— THE  DRIVER  287 

a  peaceful  picture,  in  which  it  appeared  Congested- 
districts  gold  would  fall  like  rain  upon  his  part  of 
the  country,  and  Ireland,  out  of  a  grateful  heart, 
would  ]ic.][)  England  with  soldiers  and  with  love  to 
retain  her  eminence  among  the  nations. 

T  did  not  want  to  talk  ahout  England,  however, 
for  1  had  just  come  back  from  it,  and  besides  1 
was  more  interested  in  the  men  and  women  I  saw 
about  me  than  in  political  theories  coloured  to  suit 
the  tastes  of  tourists. 

A  sort  of  loyalty  still  kept  bobbing  up  like  a 
Jack-in-the-Box  at  intervals  in  his  conversation,  but 
he  began  to  talk  humanly  enough  about  his  own 
people,  their  music,  their  dances,  and  their  journeys 
to  Englaiul.  Everybody  except  the  infants-in- 
arms seemed  to  have  been  to  England — "  yes,  girls 
and  all,  and  they  came  1)ack  with  their  characters, 
too,  thank  God,  poor  things.  Would  you  believe 
that,  now  ? " 

He  would  like  to  live  in  England  himself,  he 
said,  for  it  was  a  warm,  comfortable  country,  but 
here  there  wasn't  as  much  as  a  thorn-bush  to 
protect  you  from  the  cold  winds  that  swept  down 
between  the  hills  all  through  the,  winter.  It  was 
indeed  a  l)are  place  of  heather-coloured  hills  and 
grey  stones.  There  were  no  fences  in  the  fields — 
fields  about  as  big  as  a  sitting-room — and  only  a 
few  tumbled  stones  marked  their  boundaries. 
"Though  I  will  say  this,"  he  admitted,  turning 
suddenly  to  the  friend  who  was  with  me,  "that 
on  a  fine  warm  day  in  June  or  thereabouts,  when 


288       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

the  sun  bes  shining,  it  would  pay  you,  ma'am,  to 
be  out  in  your  shimmy." 

He  assured  us,  too,  tliat,  when  the  workers 
returned  from  England,  there  was  great  joy  in  tlie 
place,  and  the  cottages  were  lively  with  singing 
and  dancing,  the  boys  and  girls  putting  their 
means  together  to  pay  the  expenses  of  a  couple 
of  fiddlers.  I  told  him  that,  if  he  knew  a  fiddler 
anywhere  near,  we  would  rather  go  and  hear  a 
tune  from  him  than  see  the  "clift"  to  which  he 
was  jolting  us  whether  we  would  or  no.  He 
declared  that  it  would  be  a  pity  for  us  to  miss  the 
"  clift,"  but  his  face  lit  up  suddenly,  and  he  said 
that  perhaps  we  would  stay  at  tlic  hotel  all  night, 
and  he  could  drive  us  to  the  "clil't"  to-morrow. 
We  said,  "Perhaps,"  but  asked  to  be  taken  to  the 
fiddler's  house  in  any  case. 

"  AVell,"  said  he,  "  there's  Tom  the  fiddler  and 
Ned  living  in  a  house  down  the  road  a  space,  and 
we'll  be  able  to  have  a  song  or  a  dance,  if  you'd 
like  that  better.  Here's  the  house,"  he  said  after 
a  while,  pointing  to  a  naked  white  cottage  l)y  the 
roadside.  "  If  they're  at  home,  we'll  have  to  get 
in  a  half-gallon  of  porter  to  courage  them  up  a  ])it. 
Is  Tom  the  fiddler  in  ? "  he  roared  suddenly  at  a 
small  dark  girl  who  hesitated  on  the  road-side  near 
the  cottage. 

The  girl  looked  startled,  and  was  too  distant,  I 
think,  to  hear  what  he  had  said. 

"Is  Tom  the  fiddler  in?"  he  roared  again,  a 
little  louder  and  a  little  nearer  by  this  time. 


CHARACTERS.     1— THE  DRIVER  289 

"  1  clout  know,"  the  girl  seemed  to  reply  in  a 
sbriuking  voice. 

"Go  aud  find  out  now,"  he  commanded  her, 
"  and  don't  be  long.  There's  a  lady  and  gentle- 
man here  that's  come  over  from  England  to  hear 
him  playing." 

The  girl  disappeared  for  an  instant  and  was  back 
again  by  the  time  we  had  dismounted  from  the 
car. 

"  Tom  the  fiddler's  coming  down  the  field,"  she 
announced. 

"That's  good,"  he  declared,  bustling  about  like 
a  master  of  ceremonies.  "  Co  in,  sir,  go  in,  ma'am. 
Here,"  he  gave  his  orders  to  the  girl,  "go  down  to 
Nora's  and  bring  us  a  half-gallon  of  porter — good 
drink,  mind,"  lie  added  warningiy,  as  he  handed 
her  the  money  I  had  given  liim. 

Tom  the  (i(hllcr  apitcared  round  the  corner  of 
his  cottage,  walking  with  the  help  of  a  stick  and  a 
crutch.  He  had  lost  one  of  his  feet,  and  the  stump 
was  bound  in  black  wool.  He  was  a  grey,  weather- 
beaten  little  man  of  a  darkish  countenance.  He 
had  humour  in  his  eyes,  however,  and  kindliness 
and  independence  in  his  firm  mouth — a  mouth 
that  was  in  itself  a  history  of  sufi"ering.  He  wore 
on  his  head  a  black  tam-o'-shanter. 

"  Where's  Ned  ?  "  the  driver  asked  him,  uncere- 
moniously. 

"  He's  lying  in  bed,"  replied  Tom  slowly,  in  a 
voice  that  seemed  as  though  it  hurt  him  even  to 
talk,   while  he  hobbled  towards   us.      "  He's  de- 

T 


290       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

stroyccl  with  pain.  I  tliiuk  may-l)e  he's  dying." 
He  spoke  tlie  words  quietly  and  sadly,  taking  in 
our  appearance  all  the  time. 

Our  carman  was  not  for  a  moment  put  out. 

"  Go  and  tell  him  to  get  up,"  he  said.  "  There's 
a  lady  and  gentleman  here  has  come  a  long  way 
to  hear  him  and  you  playing  your  music." 

The  old  fellow  shook  his  head,  and  showed  us 
politely  into  his  house. 

"  Well,  get  down  your  own  fiddle,  anyway,"  said 
the  driver,  bundling  us  through  the  door,  and  then, 
as  the  old  man  protestingly  drew  his  fiddle  from 
under  the  bed,  and  sat  down  in  a  hard  chair  by 
the  fire,  our  guide  continued,  turning  to  us  :  "  This 
is  a  poor,  decent,  honest  man  that  whatever 
small  bit  he  has  to  keep  between  himself  and  the 
starvation,  he  makes  it  all  with  that  fiddle  you 
see  there  in  his  hands  before  you." 

The  old  man's  face  gave  a  little  twist  of  dislike, 
as  he  plucked  a  string  and  tightened  it. 

"  [  glory  in  it,"  he  said  dcliantly. 

After  that  he  spoke  no  more  English  to  us. 

"Is  docha  go  blifuil  Gaedhilg  agat  ?  "  (Likely  you 
have  Irish  ?)  1  said  to  him  out  of  my  scanty 
stock  ;  and,  with  a  new  interest  in  his  face,  he 
said  he  had,  and  after  that  he  would  talk  nothing 
else. 

He  would  have  been  glad  enough,  I  think,  to 
talk  English  on  an  ordinary  occasion,  but  Irish  at 
the  present  time  seemed  to  make  him  feel  less  like  an 
animal  being  shown  off  in  a  cage  and  more  like  a 


x^.^Nii-.-^i  ;'*•.v-;^4■ 


CHARACTERS.     I.— THE  DRIVER  291 

human  being.  It  was  easy  to  see  that  he  resented 
the  carman's  manucr  of  taking  him  and  his  house 
over,  and  rumniig  them  as  a  sort  of  peep-show  for 
tourists,  and  every  time  the  carman  said  anything 
to  him  in  Euglisli  Tom  replied  stolidly  in  Irish. 

Tlie  drink  arrived  in  a  jug,  and  the  carman 
brought  down  a  number  of  cu])S  and  nnigs  from 
the  dresser  at  the  foot  of  the  bed  and  filled 
them.  "As  clean  as  if  it  was  meant  for  the  Lord 
Lieuieii.'int's  own  tal)lc,"  lie  commented  euthusiasti- 
cally,  liaviug  looked  into  one  of  them.  IJefore 
l<)nL^  a  numbci'  of  a'irls  and  ciiildr(!n  and  men 
wandered  into  the  house,  and  took  their  seats  on  a 
long  bench  which  stood  against  the  opposite  wall. 

The  driver,  with  a  mug  of  porter  in  his  hand, 
made  us  known  to  the  company  as  a  "  lady  and 
gentleman  "  wlio  had  come  an  incredible  number 
of  miles  to  hear  Tom  })laying  the  fiddle  and  to 
learn  Irish — "  would  you  believe  that,  now  ?  " 
Having  pressed  mugs  of  good  porter  on  the  other 
men — *'  Have  a  sup  of  good  porter  now  with  the 
lady  and  gentleman  " — he  took  the  middle  of  the 
floor,  which  was  lialf  earthen  and  half  composed 
of  broken  ling-stones. 

"  I  tell  you,"  he  said,  still  with  the  mug  in  his 
hand,  and  carrying  on  a  running  soliloquy,  "  there's 
great  change  and  improvement  coming  in  this 
country.  Irishmen  have  appreciation  shown  to 
them  now  the  way  they  never  had  before.  Tiie 
English  are  beginning  to  find  out  for  themselves 
that  we're  good  men.     And  what  could  they  do 


292       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

without  us  ?  Where  would  they  be  without  Irish- 
meu  for  soldiers  ?  I  hear  now  the  King  of  England 
would  go  down  on  his  bended  knees  to  get  fair 
treatment  for  the  Irish,  because  he  knows  he 
couldn't  do  without  them  in  time  of  war." 

A  pale-haired  man  with  a  cap  in  his  hand  looked 
up  from  the  bench  where  he  was  crouching. 

"Is  it  true  he  went  to  Mass  ?  "  he  asked. 

1  said  I  didn't  know. 

"  I  heard  he  went  to  Mass,"  declared  the  pale- 
haired  man,  nodding  his  head. 

*'  Well  now,  I'll  sing  you  a  song,"  our  guide 
volunteered,  seeing  the  conversation  drifting  away 
from  him.  *'  Will  I  sing  it  in  English  or  in 
Irish?" 

We  said  Irish,  so  he  began  shouting  on  the  floor, 
and,  at  the  end  of  every  line  of  shouting,  he  would 
stop  not  only  to  translate  but  to  explain  to  us. 
It  was  a  song  about  drowning,  and  we  had  all  the 
relations  between  the  dead  man  and  his  sweetheart 
irivcn  to  us  in  detail  between  the  lines.  The 
fiddler  scraped  something  like  an  accompaniment 
when  the  song  reappeared  at  intervals,  but  he 
seemed  to  be  purposely  playing  in  wrong  time. 
Certairdy  it  was  odd  that  so  good  a  player  as  he 
sliould  always  contrive  not  to  keep  time  when  the 
driver  happened  to  be  singing,  and  I  am  quite 
sure  he  was  in  this  way  paying  the  other  out 
for  bringing  publicity  and  turmoil  into  a  decent 
house. 

After  giving  us  a  song,  the  driver  danced  for  us, 


CHARACTERS.     I.— THE  DRIVER  293 

liopping  afi  liglitly  as  an  insect  on  the  broken  floor 
in  his  thick  hob-nailed  boots.  Swallowing  anotlier 
mug  of  porter,  he  sang  to  us  a  second  time — an 
English  song  about  an  Irish  harvester  in  England, 
a  fight  and  an  arrest  by  the  police.  After  that, 
he  proposed  another  dance,  and,  as  the  friend  who 
was  with  me  did  not  feel  equal  to  such  a  floor  and 
so  acrobatic  a  partnership,  he  dragged  a  girl  with  a 
black  shawl  round  her  head  into  the  middle  of  the 
floor,  and  danced  rings  round  her  while  she  nicj'cly 
sliuljled  her  clumsy  boots  in  a  formal  self-conscious 
way. 

Everybody  in  the  house  was  silent  and  a  little 
shy — everybody  except  this  master  of  our  destinies 
who  made  us  drink  porter  or  dance  or  listen  to  his 
loud  voice  according  as  he  had  the  whim.  A  few 
delicate  bright  -  haired  children  in  shawls,  who 
had  pattered  in  on  their  bare  feet,  stared  at  us 
and  the  tremendous  driver  in  turns  from  their 
wistful  blue  eyes.  One  of  the  men  who  were 
present — a  man  with  an  underglow  of  purple  in 
his  hair  and  on  his  face — sang  us  a  brief  wonder- 
ful piece  of  music  with  Irish  words,  and  brought 
the  beauty  of  a  thousand  years  ago  into  the  kitchen 
for  a  moment ;  but  the  driver  soon  remembered  his 
duties  as  a  twentieth-century  provider  of  amuse- 
ment, and  made  the  room  ring  again  with  the  sound 
of  his  voice  and  feet. 

While  he  was  singing,  1  slipped  out  of  the 
room,  feeling  that  even  scenery  was  better  than 
this.       I    looked    out    over    the    barren    heather- 


294       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

coloured  land  to  the  barren  purple  sea,  an  odd 
woman  or  two  bending  over  the  earth  at  their 
work  in  the  middle  distance,  and  bringing  curious 
colours  into  the  scheme  of  things  with  their 
flannel  petticoats.  As  I  stood  there,  with  the  wet, 
fragrant  wind  blowing  about  my  forehead,  I 
suddenly  heard  "  God  save  Ireland"  roared  from 
the  cottage  in  a  mixture  of  voices.  When  it  was 
over,  I  went  in  again,  as  1  thouglit  it  must  l)e 
time  to  go. 

"  You  missed  it,"  the  carman  exclaimed,  striding 
excitedly  over  to  me  and  catching  my  hand.  "  You 
missed  'God  save  Ireland,'  sir.  We  must  give 
you  that  again  now.  Now,  all  join  in.  It  wouldn't 
be  right  for  us  to  separate  without  all  taking  part 
in  that  song." 

As  we  stood  around,  he  raised  his  arm,  and 
marked  time  Ijy  swinging  his  cap  round  his  head, 
and  the  song  went  on  to  the  chorus  : 

"'God  save  TrelaiKl,'  said  tliey  proudly, 
'God  save  Trelaml,' say  wc  all ; 
Whether  on  the  gallows  high  or  the  battle-field  we  die, 
Oh,  what  matter  when  for  Erin  dear  we  fall !  " 

"  Acfain,"  he  said,  and  the  absurd  business  was 
all  gone  through  once  more,  the  carman  contribut- 
ing nearly  all  the  noise,  and  the  rest  of  us  nearly 
all  the  dispiritedness. 

"And  a  good  song,"  he  declared,  "and  we 
needn't  be  ashamed  of  ourselves  either,  no  matter 
what  part  of  the  world  we  may  be  in." 


CHARACTERS.     I.— THE  DRIVER  295 

1  certtainly  wondered  at  the  man,  even  if  I  did 
not  love  his  methods.  I  began  to  see  how  Ireland 
must  present  itself  to  the  foreign  visitor — Ireland 
of  the  tourist  guides — the  Ireland  of  loud  loyalty  or 
loud  patriotism,  whichever  you  are  ready  to  pay  for. 
Ireland  of  tlie  realities  lay  about  us,  silent,  hard- 
labouring,  pondering  partly  on  high  heaven  and 
partly  on  the  price  of  bacon,  while  the  sea  fell  with 
a  mysterious  murmur  on  the  stones  and  sands  of 
her  mysterious  shore. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

CHARACTERS.       II. — THE    MAN   OF  SECRETS 

It  is  only  by  accident  that  I  came  to  visit  the 
grave  of  Myles  the  Proud,  a  liero  of  the  Crom- 
wellian  wars,  and  so  had  the  good  luck  to  fall  in 
with  Mr  Foley  and  his  singular  personality.  I 
was  passing  through  a  town  in  the  Irish  midlands 
on  my  way  to  a  demonstration  tliat  was  partly 
political  and  partly  commemorative  of  Myles's 
greatest  exploit.  He  had  fought  side  by  side  with 
Owen  Roe  O'Neill,  and  had  won  deathless  fame  by 
a  splendid  single-handed  fight  he  had  made,  like 
Umslopogaas,  against  impossible  odds.  As  he 
was  said  to  be  buried  in  the  old  churchyard  in  the 
town  in  which  I  found  myself,  with  half-a-day 
before  me  and  nothing  particular  to  do  in  it,  I 
asked  a  local  friend  to  go  with  me  and  show  me 
the  place. 

It  was  a  place  without  paths,  a  nook  of  ruined 
walls,  and  of  worn  and  falling  tomb-stones.  The 
ruins  of  a  woman  came  out  ot  the  ruins  of  a  house 
beside  the  high,  rusted  gate  of  the  porch,  and 
unwound  chains  so  that  we  might  enter.  Inside, 
a  clear,  gloomy  silence  reigned,  impressive  as  the 
silence  in  a  forest.      It  was  as  though  the  singing 

2'JG 


THE  MAN  OF  SECRETS  297 

of  birds  bad  uever  been  lieard  there,  or  the 
swish  of  a  scythe,  or  the  noise  of  a  sickle  coming 
suddenly  against  a  stone. 

Some  of  tlio  graves  Avere  fairly  modern,  and 
there  were  several  vaults  belonging  to  the  Pro- 
testant county  families — peers,  colonels,  captains, 
deputy  lieutenants,  baronets,  magistrates,  and  the 
rest.  Even  these  seemed  to  be  ajffected  by  the 
spirit  of  decay,  and  to  have  become  an  assimilated 
part  of  the  ill-kept  grass-grown  wilderness.  Our- 
selves, we  did  not  pay  much  attention  to  them, 
but  made  straight  for  the  little  oblong  patch 
where  the  church  had  once  stood — a  patch  marked 
by  a  considerable  fragment  of  a  gable  which 
still  lingered  on  in  a  sorrowful  mantle  of  ivy,  like 
nil  aged  wonian  in  a  shawl  sitting  witliout  speech 
by  the  fireside  y(>ars  after  she  ought  to  be  in  her 
grave.  Somewhere  near  this,  according  to  tradi- 
tion, Myles  the  Proud  was  buried.  As  in  the 
case  of  so  many  of  the  Irish  heroes,  there  was  no 
stone  or  epitaph  to  mark  the  exact  spot  where 
he  lay. 

I  will  be  frank,  and  confess  that  I  am  never 
able  to  take  much  pleasure  in  these  personally- 
conducted  visits  to  famous  graves.  I  do  not 
know  what  to  say,  or  even  what  to  think,  when  I 
am  brought  to  a  halt  and  bidden  to  look  down  at 
the  grave  of  some  hero,  whose  mere  name,  perhaps, 
can  set  my  pulses  dancing  in  the  solitude  of  my 
own  room.  My  imagination  stubbornly  refuses  to 
walk    in  dead,   far   off  centuries,    while    men    in 


298       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

starched  collars  and  Trill )y  hats  are  present  with 
their  aggressively  modern  shapes  at  my  side. 

Proltably,  my  companion  was  feeling  very  much 
the  same  sort  of  dissatisfaction  as  myself,  and  it 
was  with  a  sigh  of  relief,  rather  than  of  reverence, 
that  we  turned  from  our  contemplation  of  what 
may  or  may  not  have  been  Myles's  grave,  and  made 
our  way  back  to  the  churchyard  gate. 

The  stooping  woman  who  had  admitted  us 
locked  the  gate  after  us  with  a  great  rattle  of 
chains.  Leaving  the  dead  world  behind  us,  we 
were  stepping  down  the  road  on  our  way  back  to 
the  hotel,  when  a  ])i[»ing  asthmatic  voice  hailed  us 
out  of  nowhere. 

"  Well,  gentlemen,  have  you  been  taking  a  look 
at  the  old  church  ?  " 

We  stopped  and  turned  round,  and  my  friend 
introduced  me  to  a  tall,  high-shouldered  man, 
very  jerky  in  his  movements,  and  with  busybody 
written  all  over  him.  He  was  a  local  magnate  of 
some  sort — either  Clerk  of  the  Workhouse,  or 
verger  at  the  Protestant  Church — I  do  not  re- 
member which.  Beyond  the  middle  age,  he  had 
a  not  too  generous  allowance  of  grey  beard,  and 
cheeks  that  went  up  so  high  in  liis  face  that  they 
almost  buried  his  little  beady  eyes  out  of  sight. 
He  appeared  as  though  he  might  be  half-blind,  or 
an  albino,  or  have  a  squint — his  e3^es  had  certainly 
something  the  matter  with  them.  Though  he 
wore  a  pair  of  black-rimmed  spectacles,  these  hung 
some  way  down  his  nose,  and,  when  he  wanted  to 


THE  MAN  OF  SECRETS  299 

see  you,  he  usuall}'  looked  over  them,  not  through 
them.  lie  was  dressed  in  a  morning  coat  of  dis- 
coloured tweed,  which  had  the  air  of  having  been 
put  on  hurriedly,  carelessly  ;  and  a  dusty  high  hat, 
round  at  the  top,  sat  anyhow  on  his  head  with  a 
suggestion  of  absent-mindedness. 

Out  of  politeness  my  friend  told  him  the  errand 
that  had  brought  us  to  the  churchyard. 

"  I  suppose,  Mr  Foley,"  he  said,  with  the  spice 
of  conipliiiicnt  that  deceives  even  the  cleverest  of 
us,  "you  kuow  as  much  a1)0ut  these  things  as 
any  man  in  tiie  county.  Can  you  tell  us  if  we 
were  right  in  looking  for  Myles  the  Proud's  grave 
under  the  gable  of  the  old  church  ?  " 

Mr  Foley,  looking  like  the  sun  in  mid-winter 
with  pleasure,  laid  his  hand  on  my  friend's 
shoulder,  and  almost  pushed  him  back  to  the 
gate  of  the  churchyard. 

"  Come  and  I'll  show  you,"  he  said  in  his  high 
voice.  "  It's  lucky  you  young  gentlemen  met 
me.  There's  nobody  could  tell  you  all  you  want 
to  know  about  the  graves  in  this  yard,  and  the 
people  that's  buried  in  them,  as  well  as  myself." 
Whereupon  he  brought  a  private  key  out  of  his 
pocket,  opened  the  padlock,  and  ushered  us  back, 
willy-nilly,  into  the  haunts  of  the  dead. 

My  friend  threw  me  a  glance  as  though  to 
warn  me  that  we  had  let  ourselves  in  for  a  rather 
boring  experience. 

"We  haven't  much  time  to  spare,  Mr  Foley," 
he  said  deprecatiugly  ;    "  but  if  you  would  show 


300       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

us  where  Myles  is  really  buried  we'd  be  very 
much  obliged  to  you." 

"  I'll  do  thut,"  Mr  Foley  assured  him  heartily, 
walking  on  ahead  with  a  sort  of  running  motion 
through  the  long  grass,  and  halting  to  take  breath 
as  he  clambered  up  each  fresh  grave-mound.  "  I'll 
tell  you  everything  you  want  to  know.  Just 
keep  following  me." 

He  came  to  a  sudden  pause  at  the  top  of  a 
mound,  and  put  his  hand  on  the  railing  that 
marked  of!"  the  grave  of  a  coimty  family. 

"Now  look  at  that  grave,  gentlemen.  There's 
an  interesting  grave,"  he  said,  raising  his  voice 
as  thougli  he  were  addressing  deaf  people. 
"That's  where  Colonel  Finch-Bellew  is  buried. 
You  didn't  know  him,  Mr  Ward,  did  you  ? "  he 
turned  to  my  friend.  "I  tell  you,  he  was  a 
splendid  figure  of  a  man — the  splendidest  figure 
of  a  man  ever  you  saw.  He  came  home  with  a 
bad  leg  fi'om  fighting  the  !)0('rs,  and  tlien,  just 
when  \\v  had  found  his  hcallli  again,  liis  liorsc  fell 
dead  under  him  while  he  was  out  hunting,  and 
that  was  the  end  of  him.  Och,  he  was  a  hand- 
some man  !  You  would  see  him  there  in  his 
place  in  the  church  every  Sunday  morning  as 
regular  as  the  clock  in  the  town  iiall,  when  he 
would  be  at  the  castle.  Ay,  I  knew  the  Colonel 
well ! " 

He  lowered  his  voice,  and  changing  his  ex- 
pression to  the  very  opposite  of  what  it  had  been, 
cast  a  sudden  winking  glance  round  us. 


THE  MAN  OF  SECRETS  301 

'  I  could  tell  you  a  thing  about  the  Colonel 
would  make  you  laugh,"  he  half- whispered,  shak- 
ing his  head  knowingly. 

We  nodded  and  said,  "  Oh  !  "  in  an  encouraging 
tone,  feeling  our  interest  wakening  up  at  the 
prospect  of  scandal. 

Mr  l<\)ley's  expression  suddenly  changed  back 
again  to  the  deepest  solemnity.  He  fetched  a 
heavy  sigh. 

"  You  may  say  what  you  like  about  the  laud- 
lords,"  he  remarked,  as  though  gently  reju-oving 
the  curiosity  which  he  himself  had  so  cunningly 
stirred,  "  but  1  never  met  anybody  yet  with  a 
bad  word  for  the  Colonel.  Ah,  he  was  a  fine, 
open-handed  man — a  fine,  open-handed,  kindly- 
spoken  man  was  the  Colonel !  " 

After  a  decent  interval,  when  it  became 
apparent  that  tlic  story  about  the  dead  Colonel 
was  to  remain  an  eternal  secret,  as  far  as  we  were 
concerned,  my  friend  interrupted  Mr  Foley  in 
the  reverie  into  which  he  seemed  to  have  fallen. 

"  And  now,  Mr  Foley,"  he  said,  "as  we're  rather 
in  a  hurry,  and  it's  not  fair  to  be  taking  up  so 
much  of  your  time,  perhaps  we  had  better  go  on 
and  see  where  Myles  is  buried." 

Mr  Foley,  standing  with  his  hands  under  his 
coat-tails,  twisted  round  his  head  inquisitively. 

"Myles?"  he  said,  as  though  he  had  forgotten  the 
name.  "  Oh,  yes ;  Myles  the  Proud.  Come  this 
way."  And  he  hurried  forward  again  on  his  feeble 
spindle-shanks  over  the  disregarded  grave-mounds. 


302       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

He  had  not  gone  very  far  before  he  brought  us 
to  a  stop  again  to  admire  a  dull  rectangular  vault 
roofed  with  a  great  slab  of  stone. 

"Now,  perhaps,  if  you've  just  got  a  moment  to 
spare,"  he  observed,  as  though  he  were  showing 
us  one  of  the  rare  specimens  in  a  museum,  "  there's 
something  that  will  interest  you.  That's  Sir 
Harvey  Joyce's  vault.  The  last  time  it  was 
opened  was  ten  years  ago  when  old  Sir  Stephen 
died." 

He  rubbed  the  roots  of  his  beard,  and  shook 
his  head,  lowering  his  voice  wickedly,  as  he  had 
done  when  hinting  at  scandal  aliout  tlie  (Jolonel. 

"  I  could  tell  you  a  good  story  about  him,"  he 
sai<l,  liis  eyes  blinking  round  at  us. 

He  paused  and  shook  his  head  reminiscently. 

"They  say  Sir  Stephen  was  a  wild  man,  Mr 
Foley,"  suggested  my  friend,  trying  to  draw  him. 

"  Ah,  never  mind,  never  mind,"  Mr  Foley 
snap})ed  hurriedly,  with  another  sudden  change  of 
expression,  as  though  he  feared  some  of  his  secrets 
were  going  to  be  stolen  from  him,  and  he  led  the 
way  in  a  series  of  short-sighted  stumbles  in  the 
direction  of  the  old  church. 

l>efore  long,  he  pulled  us  up  again  without 
warning,  and  pointed  to  a  corner  of  the  church- 
yard where  the  enclosing  wall  had  a  rather  new 
look. 

"  Do  you  see  that  ?  "  he  squeaked  at  us.  "  AVell, 
just  where  you  see  that  new  bit  of  wall,  there  were 
three  rebels  hung  from  a  tree  at  the  time  of  the 


THE  INIAN  OF  SECRETS  303 

liebellion.  They  were  buried  at  the  foot  of  the 
tree  where  they  were  hung ;  but  that's  not 
the  best  part  of  the  story.  Perhaps  you  heard 
the  story  fi-om  me  before,  Mr  Ward  ?  A  year  or 
two  after  that,  there  was  a  most  tremendous  storm 
that  l)lcw  down  the  tree,  and  a  good  lump  of  the 
wall  beside  it.  They  gave  the  building  of  the  wall 
to  some  fool  of  a  fellow,  and  what  did  he  do  but  put 
the  new  wall  away  round  the  far  side  of  the  piece 
of  ground  where  the  old  tree  used  to  be !  I  tell 
you,"  he  tittered,  glancing  from  one  to  the  other 
of  us  with  what  seemed  like  enthusiasm,  "  when 
James  Henry  was  looking  for  a  place  to  put  his 
wife  a  couple  of  years  ago,  little  he  knew  he  would 
be  putting  her  where  she  would  be  lying  among 
rebels — rebels  that  had  died  with  the  rope  round 
their  necks  too  !  " 

His  face  beamed  with  delight,  and  his  foolish 
little  ball  of  a  stomach  shook  with  laughter. 

"James  didn't  know,  but  I  knew  !"  he  crowed. 
"  I  tell  you  young  gentlemen,  sometimes  when  I 
drop  into  his  shop  for  a  bit  of  a  chat  with  him,  I 
find  myself  thinking,  'My  bold  fellow,  if  1  had  a 
mind,  I  could  tell  you  something  would  make  you 
laugh  with  the  other  side  of  your  mouth  ! '  Ay, 
James  is  a  hearty  laugher,  but,  maybe,  if  he  knew 
the  company  his  wife  was  keeping —  Well,  there's 
a  lot  of  queer  things  about  a  place  like  this  nobody 
knows  except  an  old  fellow  like  me  that  makes  a 
kind  of  a  hobby  of  it.   ..." 

Tt  was  time  to  go,  however,  and  we  intcrru])ted 


304       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

him  to  say  bow  sorry  we  were  that  we  had  to  go 
away  before  he  had  sliown  us  wliere  iMyles  the 
Proud  was  buried. 

"  Ah,  well,"  he  commented  a  little  contemp- 
tuously, as  he  shook  hands  with  us,  "  there's  not 
much  to  see,  any  way.  Some  say  he  was  buried 
on  the  far  side  of  the  gal^le  of  the  old  church  over 
yonder,  and  some  say  it  was  a  man  of  the  same 
name  was  buried  there,  and  that  Myles  the  Proud 
isn't  buried  in  this  graveyard  at  all.  Anyway, 
I  never  could  take  much  interest  myself  in  them 
old  Irish  chiefs  that  died  three  or  four  hundred 
years  ago.  They  were  wild,  savage  fellows.  .  .  . 
Did  I  ever  tell  you,  Mr  Ward,"  he  suddenly  broke 
back  into  subjects  more  worthy  of  a  civilised 
man's  interest,  "  what  Colonel  Finch-Bellew  said  to 
me  up  at  the  Castle  the  day  he  was  leaving  for 
South  Africa?  ..." 

We  did  not  allow  him  to  get  out  his  story,  but 
thrust  our  good-l)ye3  and  our  gratitude  on  him 
with  as  little  rudeness  as  possible,  and  leaving  him 
blinking  and  wheezing  on  his  long  treml)ling  legs, 
we  made  hurriedly  for  the  gate 

He  called  after  us  shrilly  that,  if  ever  I  was  in 
the  town  again,  and  wanted  to  know  anything 
about  the  old  churchyard,  I  must  pay  him  a  visit, 
for  there  were  all  sorts  of  interesting  things  about 
the  graves  and  the  people  who  were  buried  in 
them  that  nobody  but  himself  knew. 


CHAPTER  XX 

LITERATURE    AND    MUSIC 

Ireland  is  at  present  sending  forth  two  streams 
of  literature— one  in  Irisli  and  one  in  English.  Tlie 
Hteratnrc  in  English  is,  so  far,  the  richer  in  fulfil- 
ment, but  the  literature  in  Irish  is  the  richer  in 
l)roniise,  l)ecause  in  it  Ireland  is  taking  a  first 
step  towards  the  resumption  of  the  normal  and 
traditional  way  of  her  national  life. 

The  literature  which  Mr  W.  B.  Yeats,  A.  E., 
.1.  M.  Syngc  and  others  have  ])ccn  producing,  how- 
ever, comes  nearer  to  being  an  artistic  expression 
of  the  national  life  than  any  previous  literature 
written  in  the  English  language.  Never  before 
was  there  a  school  of  writers  in  Anglo-Ireland  who 
worked  out  new  artistic  methods  for  themselves 
and  whose  work  could  not  be  matched  and  beaten 
by  the  same  kind  of  work  in  English  literature. 
Hitherto  the  greatest  Irishmen  who  had  written  in 
the  English  language  had  been  inspired,  not  by 
artistic,  but  by  propagandist  motives.  Thomas 
Davis  was  the  prophet  and  journalist  of  nationality 
in  the  middle  of  last  century,  and  the  artistic 
quality  in  his  work  was  only  occasional  and  acci- 
dental.    John   Mitcliel,    a    greater    writer    thoutrh 

U  305 


306       HOxAIE  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

not  so  great  a  tliinker,  wrote  a  s])leii(li(l  and  war- 
ike  prose,  as  readers  of  "The  Jail  Journar'  and 
"'I'lie  Last  (Jon(|uest  of  Ireland  (Perliajjs)"  know. 
But  he  too  was  preoccupied  with  immediate  facts 
and  necessities  rather  than  with  the  permanent 
things  which  are  the  material  of  literature. 
Mangan  stands  out  among  his  contemporaries  of 
the  Young  Ireland  movement  as  the  only  man  who 
was  at  once  a  fine  patriot  and,  in  the  best  sense  of 
the  words,  a  fine  artist.  His  greatest  poems  are 
in  their  substance  patriotic — "  Dark  Rosaleen," 
"  0,  woman  of  the  piercing  wail  "  and  "  Kathaleen 
ni  Houliluin,"  to  name  three  of  tliem  :  they  ex- 
pressed, however,  not  the  patriotism  of  the  period, 
but  the  patriotism  of  all  time.  They  were  not 
poems  merely  of  Young  Ireland  :  they  were  poems 
of  the  Ireland  which  abides.  Some  people  would 
put  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson's  work  near  JMangan's, 
but  Ferguson's  poems  seem  to  me  to  l)e  the  ex- 
pression of  a  noljle  talent  rather  tlian  of  imagina- 
tive genius. 

Young  Ireland,  it  must  be  said,  played  a  great 
part  in  Irish  literature  as  a  forerunner.  J\Ir  Yeats 
and  his  contemporaries  built  their  self-conscious 
literature  largely  on  foundations  which  had  been 
prepared  by  the  writers  of  Young  Ireland.  Critics 
see  in  Mr  Yeats's  poetry  the  influence  of  Blake 
and  the  influence  of  Swinburne,  but  these  are 
only  accidental.  Mr  Yeats  found  his  inspiration 
in  an  Irish  imaginative  ntmosphere,  in  the  lives  of 
Irish  peo[)le,   in   the   manifestations   of  l)eauty  in 


LlTEllATUllE  AND  MUSIC       307 

Irish  })laces,  and  not  in  the  books  of  dead  poets, 
lie  may  not  have  altogether  mirrored  Ireland  in 
his  works,  but  he  made  Ireland  mirror  himself. 
This  means  simply,  I  suppose,  that  he  is  lyrical 
rather  than  dramatic  in  his  inspiration. 

No  Irish  writer  before  him  had  used  the  English 
language  so  beautifully.  He  strove  after  perfection 
in  his  verse  as  Stevenson  strove  after  perfection  in 
his  prose.  He  invented  new  rhythms  no  less  than 
new  images,  and  gave  the  imagination  a  new  world 
of  ecstasy  in  whi(;h  to  wandcu*.  Ho  is  sometimes 
accused  of  being  vague  and  etliereal,  but,  as  for 
vaguein'ss,  this  is  ratlier  in  the  minds  of  his  readers 
who  find  themselves  in  unfamiliar  places  and 
among  names  with  hidden  meanings.  One  or  two 
of  his  poems,  I  know,  are  obscure,  and  a  few  of 
them  bring  their  meaning  to  the  imagination 
rather  than  to  the  intellect,  like  a  snatch  of  song 
in  the  wind.  His  work  can  only  be  said  to  be 
ethereal  in  quality,  however,  if  it  is  less  ethereal 
to  see  the  world  in  the  bravery  of  the  sun  than  to 
see  it  in  the  dim  approach  of  evening,  with  no 
light  burning  but  the  lights  of  candles  and,  later, 
of  the  moth-like  stars.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr 
Yeats's  dim  twilight  atmosphere  is  heavy  with 
appeals  to  the  senses  :  his  dreams  are  passionate 
dreams,  and  it  is  a  puzzling  matter  that  so  ecstatic 
a  worship  of  the  beauty  of  the  body  as  his  should 
even  have  been  lal)elled  with  the  word  ethereal. 

I    do   not    wish    to    attempt    in    this    chapter 
anything  like  a   criticism  of  contemporary   Irish 


308       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

literature,  but  only  to  hint  at  the  extent  to  which 
a  literature  of  magic  and,  beside  it,  a  literature  of 
realism  have  been  growing  up  in  Ireland  during 
recent  years.  I  do  not  think  that  the  world  has 
yet  realised  the  originality  and  depth  of  Mr  Yeats's 
genius.  His  revelation  of  beauty  seems  to  me  to 
l)e  larger  and  more  intimate  than  that  of  Keats, 
if  one  revelation  of  beauty  may  be  compared  in  in- 
tensity with  another.  Measured  by  him,  Tennyson 
is  a  mere  maker  of  phrases  and  Swinburne  a  mere 
maker  of  sounds.  Mr  Yeats  has  the  intellectual 
faculty  of  condensation,  though  perhaps  not  of 
construction  on  a  great  scale.  lie  is  a  master  of 
new  lyric  forms.  He  does  not  express  splendour 
of  personality  in  his  work,  in  the  degree  that 
Whitman  or  Hugo  or  Shelley  did,  but  he  expresses 
splendour  of  vision  such  as  none  of  these  three, 
save  Shelley,  expressed.  He  is  the  poet  of  intoxi- 
cation :  he  is  intoxicated  with  the  quest  for  the 
secret  rose  of  beauty — the  rose  of  the  beauty,  not 
of  the  spirit,  but  of  this  world.  His  delight  in  the 
immediate  beauty  of  things  is  as  nothing  compared 
with  his  passionate  craving  for  the  beauty  of  the 
unattained.  The  banners  of  East  and  West  are 
but  symbols  proclaiming  the  separation  between 
him  and  the  desire  of  his  lieart.  His  ])oetry  often 
gives  us  the  feeling  of  pessimism,  because  this 
beauty  which  he  seeks  is  in  so  largely  a  beauty  of 
this  world — a  beauty  which  the  senses  can  appre- 
hend. Immortal  beauty  itself  seems  to  reveal  itself 
most  fully  to  him  in  the  form  of  the  l)eloved.     It 


LITERATURE  AND  JMUSIC       309 

is  out  of  the  separation  not  from  immortal,  but  from 
mortal,  beauty  that  that  exquisite  poem,  "  The  Folly 
of  Being  Comforted,"  is  born — the  poem  which 
ends  : 

I'nt,  lioart,  flicrc  is  no  comfort,  not  n.  grain  ; 
Time  cnn  but  make  her  beauty  over  again, 
Because  of  that  great  nobleness  of  hers  ; 
The  fire  that  stirs  about  her,  when  she  stirs 
Burns  but  more  clearly.     0  she  had  not  these  ways, 
When  all  the  wild  summer  Avas  in  her  gaze. 
0  heart !  0  heart !  if  she'd  but  turn  her  head. 
You'd  know  the  folly  of  being  comforted. 

Mr  Yeats,  indeed,  is  the  poet  of  passionate  love 
beyond  all  his  contemporaries.  It  is  the  wistful- 
ness  of  the  lover,  not  of  the  mystic,  that  runs 
through  all  his  best  work.  And  that,  perhaps,  is 
all  the  better  for  his  art. 

A.  E.  (Mr  George  Russell),  who  is  sometimes — 
but  wrongly — looked  on  as  belonging  to  the  same 
school  of  poetry  as  ]\Ir  Yeats,  is  a  real  mystic  who 
moves  with  rapture  amid  this  world  of  appearances. 
His  is  the  divine  vision — the  vision  which  enables 
him  to  hold  converse  with  the  gods  and  to  live 
gladly.  There  is  no  man  in  Ireland  with  a  larger 
utterance — none  who  expresses  a  more  sincere  and 
buoyant  personality.  He,  like  Mr  Yeats,  is  a 
lover  of  symbols,  but  his  heart  is  set  on  the  eternal 
things.  He  does  not  intoxicate  us  with  beauty  as 
Mr  Yeats  does,  but  he  imparts  to  us  something  of 
the  peace  of  God.  His  work  has  strength  and 
sweetness — something  that  we  might  call  spiritual 


310       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

heroism.  He  is  emphatically  one  of  the  great 
men  of  contemporary  Ireland.  Lately,  I  may 
note  in  passing,  he  has  been  turning  to  painting 
rather  than  poetry. 

Mr  Padraic  Colum,  among  the  younger  writers, 
is  the  poet  of  the  earth  and  the  men  and  women 
who  labour  it — also,  perhaps,  of  the  men  and  women 
who  wander  between  the  earth  and  the  sky,  un- 
settled tramps,  Imt  with  simple  desires  for  settled 
comforts.  lie  is  a  figure-painter,  or  rather,  if  the 
word  is  permissible,  a  character-painter,  whose 
work  is  infoi'nu'd  with  })liil()S(>[)hi(;  dignity.  He 
seems  to  have  abandoned  ])oetr3'^  for  prose  lately, 
but  his  prose  sk(;l.ches  take  us  into  the  same 
atmosphere  of  fields  and  fire-sides  vvijich  we  iind 
in  the  poems  in  his  "  Wild  Earth,"  that  beautiful 
and  interpretative  volume, 

Mr  James  Stephens's  "  Insurrections "  is  the 
first  expression  of  realism  in  Anglo-Irish  verse. 
His  people  are  the  people  of  the  towns — cabmen, 
the  population  of  })ublic-houses,  grotesque  and 
battered  people.  He  is  humorous,  whimsical, 
upsetting,  grim.  Mr  Seosamh  Mac  Cathmhaoil  in 
"The  Mountainy  Singer"  gives  us  a  curious 
mixture  of  the  fairy  and  the  fighting  man.  He 
would  be  content  enough  with  the  com})aiiy  of  the 
fairies,  we  feel,  if  it  were  not  for  the  stranger — the 
Black  Earl  over  the  Sea — who  makes  Ireland 
desolate.  It  is  the  thought  of  this  that  rouses 
him  to  a  fire  of  prophecy  in  many  of  his  finest 
poems,  but  even  here  we  have  gentle  and  pleasant 


LITERATURE  AND  MUSIC       311 

music.  Air  Seamus  O'Sullivaii's  lyrics  liave  a 
quality  which  is  less  easy  to  defmc.  The  best  of 
them  are  little  passing  things  of  beauty  captured 
in  exquisitely  careful  verse. 

Mr  J.  j\l.  Synge,  who  died  recently,  had  some- 
tliiitg  of  tlu!  poetic  inspiration,  but  his  rare  and 
interesting  genius  expressed  itself  best  in  the 
dramatic  form.  His  dramas  are  wonderful  decora- 
tions rather  than  interpretations — revelations  of  a 
temperament  rather  than  revelations  of  the  world 
or  of  Ireland.  In  liis  early  enthusiasm,  when  he 
first  began  to  write  about  Ireland,  he  seemed  to 
get  near  the  large  and  simple  and  elemental  things 
in  the  people  around  him,  and  in  "Riders  to  the 
Sea"  he  gave  us  a  tragic  rearrangement  of  life 
whose  appeal  is  universal  and  which  is  written  in 
imaginative  prose  of  a  texture  without  an  exact 
parallel  in  literature.  His  other  phiys  bear  the  mark 
of  the  same  grotesque  and  decorative  genius,  but 
it  becomes  more  and  more  an  eclectic  genius  con- 
sciously using  the  life  with  which  it  comes  in 
contact  as  the  material  for  art  rather  than  leaping, 
like  a  fire,  out  of  experience  and  knowledge  as  the 
genius  of  the  great  dramatists  seems  to  do.  His 
dialogue,  with  its  haunting  rhythms,  its  figures,  its 
harsh  accidents  of  realism,  offers  a  new  experience  in 
literature  to  those  w^ho  read  it  for  the  first  time. 
Whether,  in  his  later  plays,  like  "  The  Playboy  of 
the  Western  World,"  it  was  not  becoming  too 
remote  from  ordinary  speech,  too  like  a  mosaic  of 
strange  things  instead  of  being  itself  a  living  and 


312       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

woven  piece  of  strangeness,  is  a  question  which 
disturbs  some  of  those  who  know  his  work  best. 
His  was  a  strange  and  lonely  genius — a  genius  with 
something  sinister  in  it,  a  genius  of  dark  comedy 
and  of  byways.  Like  Mr  Yeats,  he  brought  to 
Ireland  a  high  artistic  ideal,  a  reverence  for  form, 
the  value  of  which  in  a  country  seeking  after  new 
ways  of  self-expression  in  literature  can  scarcely  be 
exao-fi^erated. 

Of  Lish  novelists  Mr  Georoe  ]\Ioore  is  the 
most  notable  ;  but  his  distinctively  Irish  work, 
sunfG;estive  and    intellectual   tliouoh  it    is,   is   not 

OO  O  ' 

cornpand)le  in  structure  or  in  insight  to  "  Esther 
W.'itcj's,"  his  inasler[)icc(!,  and,  indeed,  one  of 
the  masterpieces  of  his  time.  Mr  George  A. 
Birmingham  is  a  critical  [ind  humorous  novelist 
rather  than  a  novelist  of  character.  His  "  Bene- 
dict Kavanao'h"  mves  us  the  most  interestinf^ 
and  interpretative  glimpse  we  have  had  in  fiction 
of  the  new  Ireland,  the  Ireland  of  the  Gaelic 
Lea<][uc.     Mr  BirminQ;ham   has  a  measure   of  Mr 

O  O 

Shaw's  faculty  for  analysing  points-of-view,  and 
he  has  a  fine  wit  as  well  as  a  genius  for  farcical 
comedy.  The  best  of  recent  historical  novels  is  j\lr 
William  Buckley's  Ninety-eight  story,  "Cro[)pies 
Lie  Down."  Mr  Standi.sh  G'Grady  brings  .some- 
thing of  the  Homeric  spirit  into  Anglo-Irish 
literature  with  his  heroic  prose  in  "  In  the  Gates 
of  the  North,"  his  glorious  retelling  of  the  story  of 
Cuchullain  and  the  lonf{  fioht  at  the  ford.  ^Ir 
Shan    Bullock's    truthful    idylls    of    northern   life 


LITEllATURE  AND  MUSIC       313 

have  not  yet  won  the  praise  they  deserve.  But 
the  list  of  contemporary  Irish  noveUsts,  good  and 
bad,  could  be  prolonged  through  pages. 

Lady  Gregory's  and  Dr  Douglas  Hyde's  transLa- 
tions  of  Irish  stories  and  songs  are  already  well- 
known  among  those  who  care  for  what  is  Ijcst  in 
literature.  Mrs  Mary  Hutton's  blank-verse  trans- 
lation of  "The  Tain," — the  Cuchullain  epic — has 
not  so  wide  a  reputation,  but  it  is  a  strongly- 
constructed  and  noble  piece  of  work.  Among 
historians,  the  most  brilliant  and  original  of 
contemporary  writers  is  Mrs  A.  S.  Green,  whose 
"The  Making  of  Ireland  and  its  Undoing"  is  a 
powerful  plea  for  a  complete  reconsideration  of  the 
materials  from  which  Irish  history  has  hitherto 
been  written. 

Irish  literature  in  the  Irish  language  is  a  subject 
which  I  will  not  discuss  at  Jeiigtli,  because  Irish 
is  unfortunately  a  language  of  which  I  can  as  yet 
make  but  a  limping  and  stammering  use.  It  may 
be  as  well  to  say  here,  however,  that  Ireland  has 
never  ceased  producing  literature  in  the  Irish 
language  during  all  the  turmoil  of  the  centuries 
down  to  the  present  day.  Kaftery  was  a  nine- 
teenth -  century  poet,  and  only  a  few  years  ago 
Colum  Wallace,  an  aged  poet  who  knew  no  English, 
was  recovered  from  the  workhouse  in  OuQ-hterard 
by  some  members  of  the  Gaelic  League.  Since  the 
Gaelic  League  came  into  existence,  Irish  books, 
booklets,  sketches  and  articles  have  been  published 
in    great  numbers.      Father  O'Leary's  "Seadna" 


314       HOME  LIFE  IN   IRELAND 

is  at  once  the  longest  and  the  most  popular  of  the 
new  books.  It  is  a  haphazard  mixture  of  folk- 
tale and  scenes  from  common  life,  told  largely  in 
the  form  of  dialogue.  It  is  written  with  many- 
pleasant  touches  of  humour,  and  is  rich  in  the 
idioms  of  the  countryside. 

Piidraic  0  Conaire  is  one  of  the  few  writers  who 
are  using  the  Irish  language,  not  to  re-tell  old 
stories,  but  to  express  the  realities  of  contemporary 
life.  He  has  written  several  plays,  a  short  novel 
and  a  great  number  of  short  stories.  He  is  a  lover 
of  facts,  however  cruel  they  may  be,  and  is  an 
enemy  of  the  sentimentalists.  His  best  stories 
road  like  transcripts  from  life,  thus  fnlliiling  the 
Ibseni(i  idea  of  wluit  iiuitginative  literature  ought 
to  be.  Condn  Maol  is  another  writer  of  stories 
and  historical  sketches  who  lias  a  high  reputation 
in  Irish  Ireland.  He  has  a  strong  and  whimsical 
personality  and  uses  words  with  literary  dignity. 
IVidraic  Mac  Piarais  has  given  us  in  "losag;in" 
and  other  slender  books  a  numljcr  of  stories  with 
a  great  deal  of  sentimental  charm.  It  would  be 
wrong  to  omit  from  a  list  of  Irish  writers  the  name 
of  Dr  Douglas  Hyde,  the  President  of  the  Gaelic 
League,  whose  books  on  Raftery,  on  the  Love- 
Songs  of  Connacht  and  similar  subjects,  he  has 
himself  turned  into  Enolish.  Amono-  a  host  of 
other  writers  I  will  only  mention  Father  Tomds 
O  Ceallaigh,  who  has  translated  Mr  W.  B.  Yeats's 
"  Kathleen  ni  Iloulihdn "  into  Irish  and  has 
written  a  number  of  plays  as  well.     The  tendency 


LITERATURE  AND  MUSIC      315 

in  Irish  circles,  I  may  say,  is  in  an  increasing 
degree  to  insist  upon  authors  giving  the  folk-tale 
and  the  fairy-tale  a  rest  for  a  time  and  bringing 
literature  into  relation  with  modern  experience  and 
the  modern  spirit. 

To  turn  for  a  moment  to  Irish  music,  I  am  afraid 
I  must  dismiss  it  in  even  fewer  sentences  than 
those  in  which  I  have  summed  up — or  rather 
hinted  at — the  present  position  of  Irish  literature. 
The  Irish  music  which  I  like  best  myself  is  the  old 
Irish  music,  the  music  of  the  songs,  such  as  has 
been  collected  and  published  in  recent  years  by 
Dr  r.  AV.  Joyce,  Mv  IIerl)crt  Hughes  and  others. 
Mr  Hughes,  in  his  last  collection,  "  Irish  Country 
Songs,"  does  not  profess  to  put  down  the  songs  as 
he  heard  them  with  complete  accuracy,  for  he  holds 
that  the  traditional  Irish  singer  sings  quarter-tones 
which  cannot  be  recorded  l)y  the  conventional 
method  of  notation.  Musicians  with  fixed  ideas, 
hearing  an  Irish  singer,  often  think  that  he  is 
singing  flat,  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  he  is  singing 
with  scrupulous  exactness  according  to  the  Irish 
way.  I  have  no  musical  knowledge  myself  and 
therefore  cannot  go  into  the  matter.  On  the  other 
hand,  I  have  experienced  the  delight,  as  in  sight 
and  hearing  of  strange  seas,  which  is  to  be  had  in 
listening  to  Irish  songs  sung  in  the  traditional 
manner  without  the  accompaniment  of  any  instru- 
ment. Those  who  have  never  heard  Irish  songs 
sung  except  to  the  accompaniment  of  the  piano 
have  only  an  incomplete  idea  either  of  the  graces 


316       HOME  LIFE  IN  IRELAND 

or  of  the  emotional  subtlety  and  intensity  of  Irish 
music. 

It  is  good  news  that  in  many  parts  of  Ireland 
the  people  are  taking  to  the  fiddle  again,  where 
their  fathers  were  content  with  the  melodeon  and 
its  crude  noises.  A  great  number  of  boys,  too,  are 
learning  the  bag-pipes.  Some  of  them  prefer 
the  war  pipes,  which  are  blown  by  the  mouth  like 
the  Scotch  pipes  :  others  have  a  keener  taste  for  the 
union  pipes,  which  are  filled  by  a  bellows  worked 
by  the  player's  elbow.  The  latter  is,  it  may  be 
added,  the  instrument  which  is  played  within 
houses. 

The  Fdis  Ceoil  and  the  Gaelic  League  have 
between  them  done  a  great  deal  to  encourage  the 
revival  of  Irish  music,  and  it  will  be  surprising  if 
we  have  not  before  long  a  number  of  Irish  composers 
drawing  their  inspiration  from  national  sources. 
During  the  past  summer,  indeed,  an  Irish  opera, 
"  Eithne,"  by  Mr  Robert  O'Dwyer,  was  performed 
at  the  Gaelic  League  Oireachtas.  The  libretto 
was,  of  course,  in  Irish,  and  the  performance  was, 
from  all  accounts,  excellent. 

Before  closing  this  very  personal  and  haphazard 
account  of  certain  contemporary  Irish  facts,  I 
must  express  my  regret  for  liaving  said  so  little 
about  the  part  played  in  Irish  country  life  by 
the  Irish  Agricultural  Organisation  Society,  with 
its  cooperative  dairies,  its  banks,  and  its  other 
manifold  energies.      I    should  have  liked,  too,  to 


LITERATURE  AND  MUSIC       317 

give  a  separate  account  of  the  work  of  the  Gaelic 
League.  Looking  at  the  social  and  intellectual 
changes  brought  about  in  Ireland  by  these  two 
organisations,  Irish  men  and  women  are  naturally 
growing  more  and  more  optimistic  with  regard  to  the 
future.  S(3lf-coiifidciicc  is  being  gradually  restored 
to  the  country,  and  the  nation  is  becoming  self- 
conscious  to  an  extent,  and  in  a  manner,  which  no 
one  would  have  dared  to  prophesy  twenty  years 
ago.  "  Ireland  has  always  struck  me,"  says  a 
character  in  a  story  of  Mr  George  Moore's,  "  as  a 
place  tluit  God  had  intended  to  do  something 
with  ;  but  he  changed  liis  mind,  and  that  change 
happened  about  a  thousand  years  ago.  Since 
then  the  Gael   has  been  wastiuo-."     Others  of  us 

o 

regard  those  thousand  years  as  at  once  a  pre- 
pai'ntion  and  a  propliecy — a  journeying  in  the 
wilderness.  Ireland  is  now,  as  it  were,  getting 
ready  to  leave  the  wilderness.  She  may  not  yet 
be  clear  of  all  its  entanglements  and  its  shadows, 
but  she  is  assuredly  approaching  the  only  possible 
way  out — the  way,  not  of  mere  political  Nationalism, 
but  of  nationhood  in  the  fullest  and  most  spiritual 
meaning  of  the  word. 


TL'RNDULL  AND  SI^BARS,    TRINTERS,    EDINBURGH. 


This  preservation  photocopy  was  made 

at  BookLab,  Inc.  in  compliance  with  copyright  law. 

The  paper  meets  the  requirements  of  ANSI/NISO 

Z39.48- 1992  (Permanence  of  Paper) 


Austin  1995 


DATEDUE 


uSl^;ESsi^VPRODCfeTinNri«S9.5503 


BOSTON   COLLEGE 


3   9031    022  60777   4 


